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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29333427">In The Dread Of This, Their Desolation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers'>Raindropsonwhiskers</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Darkness [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - The Magnus Archives, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Horror, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Mystery, Nonbinary Doctor (Doctor Who), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Tags May Change, chapters have individual trigger/content warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:40:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>40,886</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29333427</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The job of Head Archivist was a lot more dangerous than Theta expected. As she recovers from the aftermath of Saxon's attack, it only gets worse. But it's fine - she's got plenty of help from her friends. Right?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor &amp; The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor &amp; Yasmin Khan &amp; Graham O'Brien &amp; Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Darkness [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154603</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>90</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm back! This one is at least slightly more planned out than Happy Were Those, and as a result, a bit meatier, plot-wise. It's going to be a fun ride!<br/>TW: Discussion of murder, loss of control</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"This is my first day back at work, since the whole attempted murder by notorious serial killer who also murdered my predecessor thing. It's been less than a month, but… that was the most time off I could get authorized, even with the stitches that needed to heal. They're still pretty tender, and I can't move my shoulders too much without a <em> lot </em> of pain, but the wounds are technically closed. So, I'm back!</p><p>"Graham helped me put a second lock on the office door this morning, and I'm the only one who has a key. And I bought a pocket knife with the longest blade I could find. Just in case. I don't like the thought of… doing <em> that </em> again, but I like the idea of something getting in here and hurting someone again even less. Now there's a knife on my desk, right next to the sticky notes that had to do with Saxon and Missy and John's death. I guess I can put those somewhere else, now.</p><p>"There's a big pile of statements that are backlogged from while I was gone. I told my friends not to read them. I know I can't trust everything Saxon said, but there was something he mentioned about the statements that made me more concerned about other people reading them."</p><p>
  <em> Sigh. </em>
</p><p>"I don't know. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Though, really, after <em> that, </em> I don't think anyone could blame me. And I'm not the only one. I know Yaz had Ryan push one of the heavier shelving units over that trapdoor in the archives the day after she got out of the hospital. Her scratches healed up quicker than mine. She had less of them, though.</p><p>"I just… I hope she's okay. She's been quieter, recently. It's a little worrying."</p><p>
  <em> Bitter laughter. </em>
</p><p>"Guess I kind of get what she was talking about with me. It's awful, watching someone you care about suffer, knowing it was your fault and that you could've done something more to stop it. If I'd just-</p><p>"Never mind. I can't change any of that now. But at least I can start on the backlog. I'll just start at the top of the pile for now.</p><p>"Statement of Denise Phelps, regarding a self-help book she received. Original statement given March 25th, 2000. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</p><p>"Statement begins."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><em> I'm not sure if I brought myself here because I wanted to, or because </em> <b> <em>it</em> </b> <em> wanted me to come to this place. I suppose it doesn't matter, in the end; I'm here now, writing this, and I will continue writing until I've told as much of the story as I can. </em></p><p>
  <em> It began with the book that my son, Ivan, gave to me. A Christmas gift for the new year, meant to help me. I suppose I've always been the kind of person to at least try to keep a resolution on New Year's, and often times those resolutions took the form of self-help books. All kinds - dieting and lifestyle and cleaning and religion. Really, I think it's a wonder I never ended up joining a cult. But I digress. Ivan found a book he thought I would like in a little secondhand bookstore a few months before Christmas, and gave it to me as a gift. </em>
</p><p><em> On the surface, it seemed like a perfectly normal book. The glossy finish on a cover decorated with all sorts of pseudo-occult imagery, the uncracked spine, the title as generic as it was undescriptive - </em> <em> Eight Steps To A Better Life! </em> <em> - and the author with a name meant for late night talks on the television. If Ivan hadn't told me the story of how he acquired it, I would've thought it was brand new. </em></p><p>
  <em> But he did tell me. He'd been in the shop looking for the next book in one of the murder mystery series he's so fond of, and the book had caught his eye. It was nestled in alongside other, similar books, all advertising ways to fix your life in five, ten, twelve simple steps. This one, though, had a tiny little spider crawling down the spine. Ivan grabbed the book, only intending to brush the spider off, but the cover seemed like something I would like, and so he bought it. I don't think that he ever did find what he came in for. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> At the time, I thanked him for the book. He'd saved me the trouble of trying to find some new lifestyle for the year myself, and it did seem to be exactly the kind of thing I usually went for. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I held off on reading it until January first. I wanted to start the year off on a good note, with new motivation and ideas. So, in the meantime, the book sat on my bedside table, the cover gleaming in the light every time I glanced past it. Even at night, sometimes. </em>
</p><p><em> When I finally opened it, the anticipation was intense. Something about the book just </em> <b> <em>urged</em> </b> <em> me to read it, and waiting so long had been torturous. Despite that, though, the contents seemed fairly par for the course. There were bland, oft-repeated bits of advice about being more assertive, about how this organizational system would do wonders, about how cutting processed sugar from my diet would heal all of my problems. It was nothing I hadn't seen and tried before. </em></p><p>
  <em> But I wanted to give this book a try, regardless. So I followed each step to the letter. I tried to be more assertive in my daily life, I reorganized my bedroom to align with ley lines, I stopped putting sugar in my tea and started eating kale. It felt just like every other failed attempt I'd had throughout the years, and I expected that I wouldn't make it through the month without giving up. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> When I tried to, though, the oddest thing happened. It was early in the morning on a weekend, and I was about as eager to get out of bed as I was to make the kale omelette that I'd reluctantly put on my new meal plan for the week. The thought of just staying in bed until ten o'clock, then trying the new bakery just down the street, was extremely tempting. </em>
</p><p><em> And then, without my telling it, my body got up, and went through the motions of my morning routine. I stood up from bed, got dressed, and both made and ate breakfast, all while inside my mind I was trying to figure out </em> <b> <em>how,</em> </b> <em> let alone </em> <b> <em>why.</em> </b></p><p><em> To say it was frightening would be incorrect. I was scared, yes, by being made a passenger in my own body without warning or consent, but that fear was as distant as any control I had over myself. I could think about how terrified I was, but without the tightness in my chest or the adrenaline in my veins, there was nothing to </em> <b> <em>feel.</em> </b></p><p>
  <em> Then, after breakfast was done, and I was - according to the schedule I had written with no intention of actually sticking to it - free for half an hour before I was due to begin working on a proper house cleaning. I could feel it the moment whatever had puppeted my body gave up control, as I nearly fell over where I stood. For a long moment, I just stood there, too afraid that if I tried to move I wouldn't be able to do anything else. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Finally, I took a step, and the relief I felt when I could actually do it was overwhelming. I practically ran to my phone, and I dialled Ivan's number. He didn't pick up, which was when I remembered that he had some meet up with his friends until around noon. I tried calling my friend Elene, though when she answered, she said she was too busy to talk for long. Some emergency with her dog, I believe. After that, I tried my neighbor, Louis, but the call went straight to voicemail. Clearly, I wasn't meant to tell anyone what had happened to me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Which is, I suppose, part of what makes this statement so odd. Why can I tell all of this to a total stranger, working away in some dusty archive, but I couldn't tell my own family or friends? Why am I being allowed such freedom to write what I want, when most of the time I cannot even speak freely now? What makes this place so different, so important? </em>
</p><p>
  <em> But I believe I'm getting ahead of myself. Pardon my divergence; it's been far too long since I could say what's on my mind. </em>
</p><p><em> After the failed phone calls, I found myself giving up. It was, at least at the moment, easier to go along with the schedule and keep some semblance of control, rather than attempt to ignore it once more. So, after precisely half an hour of crying in my bedroom out of sheer helplessness, I cleaned the house. Top to bottom, just as I had planned. Every movement I made felt as though it could be the last one that </em> <b> <em>I</em> </b> <em> would be allowed to make, and it gave the whole endeavor a frantic, frightened air. But I must admit, the house was cleaner than it had been in a long time when I finished. </em></p><p>
  <em> Luckily, I had nothing else planned for the day. The first thing I tried to do was to burn the book. I lit it on fire, watched it burn, and then watched helplessly as my body moved to extinguish the fire and as the book revived itself from a charred heap to its original glossy condition. Next, though by then I was certain it would do little good, I tried to toss it out. That time, I got as far as placing the bin bag into the dumpster outside before I found myself digging through it to retrieve the book and clean it off. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> By that time, I felt utterly helpless. Have you ever felt that way? Trapped in a situation that you have no control over, no way of changing anything that happens to you? Like a fly caught in a spiderweb, knowing that every attempt at rebellion will only lead to a faster death, but staying still will do nothing to save you. That was how I felt. Completely, utterly, unavoidably helpless. My cries for rescue would, I was certain, continue to go unanswered as long as I made them. My attempts to get rid of the book only made things worse. I had no way to fight back, and no choice but to obey what it wished of me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The one final, desperate hope for escape that I maintained lay within my schedule. If I could change it, I thought, then perhaps I could release myself from the book's control. And I did try; I erased the entire schedule, tore the paper to shreds and burnt it and scattered the ashes out the window. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> That was a mistake. </em>
</p><p><em> Without the schedule to keep it in line, the book seemed to take total control over me. I could see myself doing things - oftentimes, normal things, things that I would regularly do - and it would not be </em> <b> <em>me</em> </b> <em> doing them. I would have to watch as my hands made tea just the way I liked it, and taste the muted flavors of the tea as my body drank it without my command. </em></p><p>
  <em> The few brief, scant moments of freedom that I was able to obtain - or, as I am sure it more likely, was given - only served to make the helplessness worse. Knowing that I could move my own body, control my own actions, and still do nothing to save myself from this living hell became a torture worse than death. Which, in case you were wondering, was something I attempted, to no avail. I would rather not go into detail. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> That has been my life ever since. An endless repetition of choices I do not make, movements that happen whether I want them to or not. As much as I would like to think that the choice to come here was entirely my own, I cannot be sure of even that, these days. Sometimes, I find myself thinking things that don't seem quite right, and I can never tell whether they are just odd thoughts, or something more sinister. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I almost hope it is the latter, though I fear it may not be; freedom from control of even my thoughts would be a mercy at this point, and I do not think the book would grant me such reprieve. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>"Statement ends.</p><p>"Well. Couldn't even get one with a happy ending to start with. I suppose that was too much to hope for. It's morbid, but I hope Ms. Phelps got the relief she wanted, rather than continuous suffering like that.</p><p>"I'll do the research, but… I doubt anything suspicious is going to turn up. Not with this kind of statement. Not when the best option is death."</p><p>
  <em> Sigh. </em>
</p><p>"Sorry. That's not a good thing to say. Ever since Saxon, ever since what I did to him, I just… It's not like I can really talk to anyone about it. Yaz was there, but I don't want to remind her of what happened, and even the Institute-sanctioned therapists are going to have issues with <em> murder. </em> If it even counts as that. It- it should, I think. He was still enough of a person to be deliberately cruel.</p><p>"The worst thing is, though, I don't really feel bad about it. I'd have liked to find another way, but I don't honestly think any of them would have worked. Any other choice I made would have ended with either me, Yaz, or both of us dead. I <em> had </em> to kill him, and I regret that, but it's a distant kind of regret. In that same situation again, I'd make the same choice, I think."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>"The research on Ms. Phelps was exactly like I expected. Nothing out of the ordinary. If anything, she seems to be doing quite well for herself. It's... impossible to tell whether it's her or the book. For her sake, I hope she got what she wanted.</p><p>"End recording."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>No TWs, just Friendship!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"So, I know it's a little different, doing two statements in a week, but I think I might have to start that in order to catch up with the backlog. There's just so many now. I don't even know </span>
  <em>
    <span>how,</span>
  </em>
  <span> it's not like there were a ton of unfiled statements we'd found before, but suddenly there's whole stacks of real ones. I'm starting to understand why John never got caught up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You know, even after everything, I still have to think before I talk about him in the past tense. Or maybe </span>
  <em>
    <span>because</span>
  </em>
  <span> of it all. The way Saxon talked about him felt like a whole different person than the John I knew, and it's difficult to reconcile the man who used to play classic rock songs on his guitar at the Institute holiday party with a man who would- who begged for death from a monster. Cognitive dissonance, I guess."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Knock, knock.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hey boss? There's someone here to give a statement."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Send them in, Graham!"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Creak of hinges.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Footsteps.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"He hasn't filled out the paperwork yet but I thought he could do it in here, if that's alright with you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, that's fine. Just leave the door cracked, would you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course, boss."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sorry, we just had an… incident, last month. I promise, the walls are pretty soundproof. I'll be the only one hearing your statement. I'm Theta, by the way."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, no, it's fine. I don't mind. And, uh, this is going to sound </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> weird, but I have to ask. Do you- did you grow up in the Prydonia Foster Home?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"How did you know that?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You don't recognize me?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, I… wait. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Koschei?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shuddery exhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"So you do remember me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course I do, how- how couldn't I?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know, stupid question. It's just been a long time, and when I heard your name but you didn't seem to know me, I thought maybe…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Twenty years isn't long enough to make me forget my first friend."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Twenty years and six months."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Soft laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah. Been a little bit, huh, Kos?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I did try looking you up, a few times. I never was able to find anything."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm not big on social media. I looked for you, too."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, I think we're quite alike in terms of internet presence. I don't have any either."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thete, would you mind if I hugged you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Just be careful of my shoulders. They're a little… mauled."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What happened? Are you alright?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's a long story. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Really</span>
  </em>
  <span> long."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you free tonight? I'd love to catch up, but maybe not while I'm supposed to be working."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can be. If you want, you can come by my flat. I'd like to think I'm a decent cook."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll be the judge of that."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So it's a date? Or, uh-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, it's okay, I know what you meant."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right. Does seven sound good?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Seven sounds brilliant."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I missed you, Theta. For months after you left, I wouldn't talk to anyone else. I couldn't believe you were gone."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I didn't want to go. Not without you. But it wasn't like I had much of a choice. She- I think she bribed some people to make things go faster, and ten year olds don't exactly have valued opinions. Did you ever…?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No. A few foster homes, on and off, but never anywhere permanent. I didn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> there to be anywhere permanent, just in case you came back."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Think this is the longest I've hugged anybody in a while. You're warm."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And you're shorter than me, now. Just a bit."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Shut up."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I should go soon. I'll give you my number, then I'll stop distracting you from your work."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Wait, what about your statement?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It can wait. Besides, I think I'd feel better talking about it over dinner, if you don't mind bringing your recorder."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hardly standard archiving procedure."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Somehow, I think you'll manage."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think you're right. Want me to walk you out?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll be fine, but thanks. See you at seven, Theta."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I might be a little late."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"What else is new?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Footsteps.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Quiet laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well. None of that felt real. Koschei's number is on the paperwork he was supposed to fill out for his statement, and I know he was here, but… There's not really a good way to process suddenly seeing your childhood best friend again after </span>
  <em>
    <span>two decades.</span>
  </em>
  <span> And then planning to have dinner with him, at his flat, where he's going to cook dinner. It feels like a dream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Actually, I'm pretty sure I had exactly this dream, when I was younger. When I was having bad days, or when…"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Knock, knock.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Come in!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What was up with that guy? He came in to give a statement, but it was either one quick statement, or something happened."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nothing bad happened, Ryan. We just- we grew up together. He recognized me, and it's been years since we saw each other, so we made plans to talk. He figured it might be easier to give his statement that way."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Trust me, if he was up to something, I would know. He was always an awful liar."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Alright. It's just- I'm worried."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't blame you. But I'm fine, really."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"For once, that sounds like it's true."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oi! I always meant it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, well, that's not really the same thing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're too clever for your own good, sometimes."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You sound like my nan."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can think of worse people to sound like."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Really, though, if you ever want to talk about it. We're here for you. Yaz might not </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to talk about it, but Graham and I can listen."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate it. Really."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What are friends for?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"If you want, you can come out and sort statements with us instead of recording in here. We could use the help."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You know, I think I'll take you up on that. Just give me a second, and I'll be right out."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Okay."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Footsteps.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>There's a prose oneshot of Theta and Koschei's Not A Date that's chapter 1 of 'The Dying Embers of an Altar-Place' as well!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: the ocean, drowning</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Dinner with Koschei was nice. Really nice. Talking to someone who isn't mixed up in all of this was a good reset, I think. We just caught up with each other, and talked about life, without any of the… weird stuff. We texted a lot during the weekend, and I sent him </span>
  <em>
    <span>so many</span>
  </em>
  <span> pictures of Idris.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But it's Monday again, which, unfortunately, means I have to read another statement. It's amazing, the sheer volume of statements that come in that aren't </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span> like these. And yet, there's never a shortage for me. Aren't I lucky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh. This one's from the Usher Foundation, sent over to us a few years ago. That reminds me, maybe I should try contacting Nardole. He might know something about what happened to Bill and Clara, and maybe- maybe I could tell him what happened to John.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Kaitlynne Perdon, regarding a cruise. Original statement given July 8th, 2014. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I've never been a fan of swimming. I'm not bad at it, but it's never been my thing. But Cassie - my girlfriend - wants to be a marine biologist, and she's obsessed with scuba diving. She's got a real certification and everything. And we live in California, so it's not like there aren't plenty of chances for her to go. That's usually what she does over the summer; leads scuba tours for tourists and stuff.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She knows I don't like swimming, so she never tried to make me come with her before. But this was some special dive, a cruise to a coral reef near Hawai'i, and she really wanted me to come too so it wouldn't just be her and the gaggle of straight white guys that would be going. All the expenses were being covered by her job, and I had the time off from my job, so I decided I might as well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Cassie was so excited. I was a little less so, but I figured I could spend most of the cruise catching up on books that'd been filling up my to-read list and get away with going diving once or twice. She would be going out nearly every day for a week for the job, which suited the both of us just fine. She would get to go diving and see some pretty reefs, I would get to relax and spend some quality time with my girlfriend after she came back. It all seemed perfect.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And, really, for the first few days, it was. The cruise ship was huge, owned by some company called the Midnight Corporation. It had everything - pools up top, a movie theater, a massive dining hall with a buffet, an arcade, a spa. It was big enough that there were elevators between the floors, even. I'd never been on a cruise before, so I don't know if that's normal or not, but it sure impressed me when I saw it for the first time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Cassie and I settled in to our suite and spent most of the two days it took to get to the reef exploring the ship and having fun. I won her a silly eel plush at the arcade. They're her favorite animals, and she wore it like a scarf the whole rest of the day. The number of comments we got about how lucky she was to have such a good best friend was </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>staggering.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> But, I mean, it's not like it was really anything new. And apart from that, it was just fun.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The third day, we got to the reef, and Cassie had her first dive she was supervising, along with like nine other divers. I saw the group of tourists as they were lining up to get in the water, and there must've been a hundred of them at least. I'd considered going with her on the first day, but I figured that waiting until the second day, once Cassie was more familiar with the reef, might be a better idea. So, I finished the first book I'd brought with me, then wandered around the ship for a bit.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I got a little lost, somehow. Cassie likes to joke that I wouldn't be able to find my way out of a paper bag, and she's right. Even then, though, I'm not sure how I ended up two floors below our suite, looking for the stairs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The doors on this floor were a different color than the ones on the other floors. Gray instead of blue, and without room numbers. I thought they were just for staff and laundry and stuff. Thinking that I might be able to find someone who knew their way around, I knocked on one of the doors.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I heard something </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>scream</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> in that room. Something that sounded an awful lot like a human. But the door must've been locked, because when I tried to open it, all I could do was pull on it uselessly. It wouldn't open. Eventually, whatever was in the room stopped screaming, and started sobbing instead. It was </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>definitely</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> human, I knew that by then.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I heard footsteps, I hoped it was some member of the staff who might have a key or something, or would be able to tell me what was going on. Instead, it was a man dressed all in black. He looked at me, then told me it would be best if I went back upstairs. That he didn't want anything disturbing the 'esteemed guests'. That's what he called them. I was about this close to telling him to eff off, but then he smiled in this weird, creepy way and said that I would be better suited to the deeps than to the darkness.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It wasn't a threat, really. Writing it down now, it doesn't look like a threat. But the way he said it, with that not-quite-human grin… it felt like a threat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I said that I'd just gotten a bit lost, and one I found some stairs I'd be happy to leave the other guests alone. The guy turned and walked down the hallway, and I followed him. There wasn't really any other example. He led me to the stairwell and told me to enjoy the rest of my vacation.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When Cassie got back from her dive, she was so worn out that I didn't want to worry her by saying anything. I just ate lunch with her and we spent the afternoon watching cheesy, stupid sci-fi movies on the TV in our room. Well, I ended up doing most of the watching, since Cassie was asleep. After that, we had dinner, and ended up at the arcade again. She destroyed me at Pac-man, just like she always does. For just a moment, while she was off getting us a few more tokens for another round, I thought I saw the man in black again out of the corner of my eye. When I turned to look, there was nothing there.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next day was the day that I'd planned to go diving with Cassie. I was a little shaken up after what happened, but I didn't want to bail on her without an explanation, so I got ready to go. There was another big group of tourists there, listening to the lecture about the hand signals and leaving if you felt unsafe and what to do in case of emergency. All the normal stuff, apparently. It was made a little more exciting by the fact that Cassie was the one giving the presentation, and she just happened to pick me as the example. She walked me through how to get the wetsuit and oxygen tank on before the dive, and when the time came to get in the water, she went in right after me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Going under for the first time was strange, but not scary. It felt like what I imagine flying does for birds - weightless and all-consuming. And beautiful. The reef was positively gorgeous. All the coral and the fish moving around each other like one vast organism. As we swam deeper down, I started to understand why Cassie liked it so much. If I could see this every day, it would be worth overcoming my dislike of swimming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After a few minutes of general ooh-ing and ahh-ing, Cassie started showing her group - including me - around. She led us through the coral, so close that we could have touched it if it wasn't against the rules. I think some people did anyway, but I kept my hands to myself and just took it all in.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At some point, I got caught up watching two parrotfish fight over a bit of food, and the group moved on without me. When I realized, I moved to keep up with them, and then…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The reef </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>moved.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> The entire reef shifted, like a massive creature turning over in its sleep. Fish swarmed out of the way as a single eye made of coral blinked open and looked directly at me. It was easily as big as I am, the pupil made of deep blue coral and the rest of the eye of bright yellow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It moved again and I could see jaws of stone and coral open wide. Even though the rest of Cassie's group was close to that gaping maw, it was only focused on me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I realized, then, just how much ocean there was between me and the surface. The light traveled down well enough to see, but also enough to remind me that it had taken nearly ten minutes to get down this deep. With an oxygen tank strapped to my back and going up… I knew it could take twice that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The creature blinked, and shifted to face me. I could see so many teeth, each longer than my arms. If it wanted to, all that thing would have to lunge and I would be dead.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Panic had made me forget Cassie's instructions on what to do in an emergency. It was hard to remember to breathe properly, and I could feel water start bubbling into my mouth and around the edges of my goggles. I started swimming up as fast as I could, but I didn't seem to make any progress. The creature was just as close beneath me, and the surface just as far away. And yet, somehow, Cassie and the other groups fell away, gone beneath me and that lurking, awful thing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I thought I was going to die. The creature was going to swallow me up and I would die, what felt like thousands of miles beneath the sea, nothing around me anymore but empty water.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And then, all at once, I breached the surface. I looked around, terrified, for Cassie or any other human being, and I saw Vince - who was in charge of helping people get back onto the cruise ship if they left early. He waved me over and I came to join him. I looked down as I did, and saw the coral reef below me, just as it had been before it awoke.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Vince got me back onto the ship, and when Cassie came up, I told her that I'd seen something under the water and panicked. Not really a lie, but… the whole truth felt like it would be too much. She understood, thankfully. Diving isn't for everyone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Between that and what I heard in the lower levels of the ship, I spent the rest of the cruise trying to pretend everything was fine. Cassie said she enjoyed the rest of her dives, and I was happy for her. It gave me a new appreciation for what she does, honestly. Braving the fathomless deeps just for the sake of some pretty pictures. I certainly couldn't do it. One time was more than enough.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This one is… interesting. Besides being from the Usher Foundation, there's something familiar about the name of the company. I know I've heard it somewhere before. A screaming human trapped in a luxury cruise ship and a lurking sea monster certainly doesn't bode well for them, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wonder who that man was? Ms. Perdon didn't give much description beyond being dressed in black, so that's not much help, but he clearly knew about the creature in the reef. Or, well, it seems to have been the reef itself. The reef creature. The man knew what it was, and either knew Ms. Perdon would encounter it, or made plans for her to after their encounter. Guess it's time for a new sticky note."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"While Yaz and Ryan checked up on Ms. Perdon and the Midnight Corporation, I emailed Nardole. I told him I'd read the statement, asked why he sent it in the first place, and then said if he wanted to talk about John and his other assistants, we could set up a meeting. I don't know if he'll even respond, but if he does, then we might be able to help each other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Anyways. Research results. Kaitlynne Perdon is alive and now married to Cassiopeia Brunn, according to her Facebook profile. Yaz says they're still living in California, though I'd bet that Mrs. Perdon hasn't gone on any more dives with her wife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"As for the Midnight Corporation… I recognized the name because they were involved in a scandal surrounding some spa in Russia where three people were killed during a tour bus malfunction. It was just last month, so I must have seen news about it while I was recovering. A little more digging around on Ryan's part showed that the spa wasn't the first time there'd been a death at a Midnight facility. One hotel in Sheffield had a population of invasive brown recluse spiders that killed a security guard, and a few years before Ms. Perdon gave her statement, someone drowned on another Midnight cruise. They haven't faced any real consequences, but they're gaining a bit of a reputation. Somehow, I think whatever Ms. Perdon stumbled across in the lower levels and all those other deaths are connected. Which means another sticky note.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's all Ryan could find, because apparently anything more useful is buried under miles of red tape. Not surprising, but it's definitely adding to the mystery. I might have to see if I can find anything myself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Discussion of a cult/religion, arson</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"I found a worm in my office this morning. Or a maggot. Something pale and slimy. I took it back outside, since I didn't want to kill it, but it gave me a bit of a weird feeling. The way it moved when I picked it up, even through the tissue, felt… wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Worms aside, though, I think today is going to be good. I found some more information on the Midnight Corporation, including two journalists who've been going after it for a while - James Smith and Donna Noble. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And</span>
  </em>
  <span> I got a reply from Nardole, saying he'd be happy to talk to me about John's assistants. We've got a meeting scheduled for next month, though he said he couldn't come back to the Institute. Didn't say why, but I don't blame him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's nice to be making actual progress on solving these mysteries, instead of just floundering in the dark. Makes me feel like I'm doing something helpful here, instead of just filing statements of people without making a difference.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But I still need to do that, too. On the bright side, I think I'm building up a resistance to whatever it was about the statements that was giving me a headache. Doing them more frequently hasn't worn me out yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Solomon Brown, regarding a church. Original statement given February 16th, 2006. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I grew up Catholic, which I guess explains a lot of things about me right off the bat. My teenaged flirting with a goth phase, my love for imposing architecture, my rebellion in the form of atheism and a job teaching chemistry. But this isn't about all that, not really.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Derrick and I both taught science, though he taught physics. When I started teaching, he'd already been there for a handful of years, so he kind of helped me out. Usually, my students would end up having him the next year, which led to some gossip between us. Not much, not really, but I would give him a heads up about more troublesome kids. We'd go out for drinks occasionally, the two of us and sometimes his wife, Rachel.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He first mentioned the Church on one of those nights. I'd asked him what Rachel was doing, since she wasn't with us, and he said she was at a church event. Derrick never really struck me as the religious type, so I asked him what denomination they were. He laughed at me and said they weren't Christian; it was some little splinter of a splinter of a cult based around a book written back in the 1700s, or something like that, called the Church of the Lightless Flame.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I thought it was a bit weird from the get-go, but I didn't say that. Derrick didn't really say more on the topic, either, so I figured it would be best to just leave it alone. We finished our drinks and went home, and I didn't forget about it, but I stopped thinking about it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A few weeks later, Derrick was out from work for two days without any sort of warning. Administration was, understandably, irked by this. When Derrick did finally show up again, he acted like nothing had happened. I didn't hear it myself, but the other chemistry teacher, Anya, claimed he told administration it was for religious purposes. That didn't stop them from threatening to fire him if it happened again without fair warning. I guess they were too worried about a lawsuit to actually follow through, though, because Derrick took another day off the next week, again without warning.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next time we went out for drinks, I asked him what he'd been doing. He explained that there had been a death in the church, and he'd been attending the last rites. Not the funeral or anything like that, but the 'last rites'. Maybe the confusion on my face was really obvious, because Derrick continued, saying it was private, but involved cremation and a ritual with the ashes. So that the spirit would remain, even as the body burnt to nothing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The way he said it was just a little odd. Fervent, I suppose. There was a glint in his eyes as he looked at me from across the table that felt a little too creepy for my liking. That, and I remember the pub got strangely warm while we were talking about it. Like someone had turned the thermostat all the way up, even though it wasn't all that cold.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I didn't want to judge, though. God only knows how weird my own religious upbringing sounds out of context. So I told him I was sorry for his loss - and he kind of laughed at that, just a little - then waited a bit before saying that I'd have to go early, for some appointment. I don't know what exactly I told him, honestly, but it was definitely a lie. The pub was getting uncomfortably hot, and I was getting a little freaked out despite myself, so I really don't think anyone could blame me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Over that weekend, I started looking up the Church of the Lightless Flame. Seeing if I could find anything about it. There was a webpage that looked like it hadn't been updated since the internet was first created, a grand total of two people on Reddit asking similar questions to mine about what the Church really was, and zero helpful answers. No news articles, no attempts at recruitment, nothing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In retrospect, it was stupid of me. A strange, almost unheard of church that was making my colleague miss work for inexplicable reasons should have raised more flags than it did. And even though it hadn't, I </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>definitely</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> shouldn't have asked him if it would be okay if I came to a service. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. But that didn't stop me from doing it at the time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The building was a little chapel, about twenty-five minutes' drive from where I live, right on the border of the countryside. Brownstone, not really big enough to fit the size of congregation I was used to, but it certainly seemed to do the job. The car park was more of a field, but it had clearly been in regular use for a while. There were tire tracks imprinted in the grass.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My first impression when I went inside was that it was somewhat underwhelming. I wasn't really sure what I'd been expecting - maybe something dramatic and blatantly cult-ish - but it wasn't a tidy, bright little room. The pews were made of a dark, polished wood, the carpet a cheerful shade of red, the widows open to let in late autumn sunlight. People milled around in twos and threes, chatting amiably with each other. I spotted Derrick and Rachel quickly, and they gestured me over. They introduced me to a friend of theirs - I forget his name, but it was something strange - who said he hoped I found what I was looking for. I couldn't tell if he meant answers to what the Church was about, or in a more spiritual sense. Maybe he meant both.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Derrick and Rachel let me sit with them in their pew as the service began. The… preacher, I suppose is the right term, stood at the front of the room in front of a pulpit made from the same wood as the pews, carved with flames that almost looked like they were moving in the sunlight. He held a worn leather book in his hands, the cover emblazoned with the same fire as the pulpit, and began to read aloud.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The passage he read spoke of a cleansing fire, a burning destruction that would wipe the slate of the world clean again and leave nothing but ash in its wake. A burning and suffering such as the Earth had never known, for the sake of rebirth. It was horrible, really, but I couldn't stop listening. I wanted to leave, but I was suddenly very, very aware that I was seated at the very front. If I stood to leave, everyone would see, and somehow, I doubted they would take kindly to it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the preacher finished reading, he launched into a sermon about minor manifestations of the Lightless Flame in daily life. Reveling in the desolation it brings, not grieving losses but celebrating them. Bringing them upon others. Letting loose your feelings through the purifying fires. It hit me, in a very distant kind of way, that he was actually encouraging arson.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As the sermon wound to a close, everyone began to stand and file out of the chapel. I didn't know what else to do, so I followed Derrick and Rachel out into the field. Behind the church was a large fire pit that </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>definitely</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> wasn't legal or up to code. It was just a low ring of stones, with a huge mesh dome covering the top. A handful of people stepped forward to remove the mesh, and others brought forward logs and personal articles. Books, clothing, toys. Not all of it looked like it belonged to the person carrying it. They tossed it all in along with the wood, and the man Derrick had introduced me to earlier bent down to light the fire. He must have had a lighter or something in his hand, because it almost looked like it ignited on contact.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The fire wasn't red, like I expected. Instead, it was white-hot, almost translucent in places. Just pure, unrelenting heat. It shouldn't have been possible, given the fuel source, but… Even from where I stood, a few paces back, it felt like it was going to burn me - and yet, some of the congregation got even closer. I couldn't hear much over the roar of the flames, but it sounded like they were chanting something.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Slowly, the fire burned out, and people began to leave. I took my chance as soon as I could, and drove home. I turned the air conditioning in my car on, but even at its coldest, I still felt too warm.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I saw Derrick at work the next day, and told him that while I enjoyed the service, I didn't think it was for me. He sort of nodded and told me that he understood, and that when I changed my mind, they would welcome me back. It was a little unnerving, the way he said it with such certainty. Such inevitability.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What really prompted me to come here, though, was the fire at the school. Nobody got hurt, since it happened after school hours, but there was a lot of damage to the building. According to the police, it was a teenager smoking that caused it. But I know it was Derrick. He's dangerous - that whole church is - and I knew nobody else would believe me, and I needed to tell </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>someone.</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm scared he'll come after me, next. I'm scared that he might have been right, and that I might end up back at the Church. This basement feels unnaturally warm, even now as I write this. Like there's a fire burning, not too far away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ugh, now I feel like I need to turn the air conditioning on down here. Usually it's cold enough it's not a problem, but I feel too warm. It's probably just reading this, but… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've never heard of the Church of the Lightless Flame, though if what Mr. Brown says is true, then I suppose that makes sense. It certainly sounds like a cult, maybe one that's drawing its power from a Kovarian. The book he mentioned certainly could be one. I'll have to do some research."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"No luck on the book, Kovarian in origin or otherwise. There really isn't anything out there on the Church, besides what Mr. Brown already talked about. The website is now defunct, but even the Wayback Machine showed just a single page with the church's location and service times. No more information, not even a phone number. The address listed should be in Solihull, but apparently it doesn't actually exist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The arson he referred to may have been the Alderbrook School, which was partially destroyed in early 2006. An old yearbook Graham found from 2005 does show both Mr. Brown and a Derrick Olstead as faculty, though records indicate Mr. Olstead left the school by 2010. The culprit of that arson was never found.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"As for Mr. Brown himself… His house burned down in 2008, which was apparently caused by a gas line breakage, though Mr. Brown survived. He died less than a year later of complications with typhoid fever, of all things. As according to his will, Mr. Brown was cremated, and his ashes given to an unnamed religious organization for handling. I'm almost certain that it was the Church, but there wasn't enough information to make that conclusive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This almost reminds me of the letter from Catheryn Burroughs. The mention of the spirit sticking around after death would fit in with the apparition she saw, and the emphasis on fire and destruction would almost make sense with Quincy's rather unlucky life. Maybe they got on the wrong side of someone in the Church…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll put that on a sticky note, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Clowns, non-graphic mentions of being skinned<br/>Happy Valentine's Day, have some creepy nonsense!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Koschei and I had lunch over the weekend at a little cafe near my flat. It was good, being able to talk about life without anything from here bleeding over. He complained about his coworkers, and I griped about filing the less </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span> statements, and it was just pleasant. I haven't exactly got many friends to begin with, and apart from him, none of them are outside of the Institute. And don't get me wrong, I love my friends here, too, but it's a little harder to get away from all of this with them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I did end up telling him a bit more about how I got hurt, but I tried to keep the details vague. I… I don't want to drag him into this mess, too. Yaz and Ryan and Graham are already part of it, and given the fact that Clara Oswald was the last - and maybe </span>
  <em>
    <span>first</span>
  </em>
  <span> - person to quit from this place, I don't think any of us are getting out. But I can at least keep Koschei away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Speaking of Clara Oswald, though, Nardole sent me a statement that he said may have a connection to her. He didn't say </span>
  <em>
    <span>how,</span>
  </em>
  <span> but I figure it can't hurt to read it. I'll probably just end up with more questions, but what else is new?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Chloe Heath, regarding several encounters with a woman. Original statement given November 11th, 2006. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don't really know where to start. The beginning is probably the right place, but it's a little hard to tell what's actually the beginning. Is it the first time I went to a circus? The time that I had to leave, crying, at six years old because I was terrified of the clowns? The time that my high school boyfriend made me go with him to the fair even though I told him I didn't want to, under threat of breaking up with me? I have a long history with circuses, is the point I'm trying to make, and I don't know how much of it truly connects to the woman.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I suppose I could start in high school, since that was around the time my fear of circuses took on a real shape, instead of the loose, vague kind of fear you have as a child. You know what I mean, don't you? There's a difference between a fear of the dark when you're a little kid and the only things lurking there are what you can imagine, and the fear of something </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>in</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> the dark when you're grown up and all too aware of the very real threats that could be hiding. Serial killers or rapists or burglars or the sort of shadowy, unreal terrors that are more anxiety than truth, but just as frightening. Or, to put it another way, there's a difference between being scared of loud noises and bright colors when you're six, and being forced into a crowd of people with a guy you're not even really in love with so you can sit for an hour in a disgusting seat with mediocre popcorn watching people in face paint leer into the audience, all the while convinced, deep down, that one of them will drag you off after the show and murder you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bradley was your typical high school guy. He had a fancy truck that his parents bought him for his sixteenth birthday that was louder than it had any right to be, played football even though our school's team was awful, and was handsome in a bland kind of way. I was a cheerleader - though only at the behest of my best friend at the time - and Bradley asked me out after a game in our sophomore year, and I said yes more because I was startled than anything else. Despite the stereotypes, a lot of cheerleaders don't date the football players. But Bradley was, well, stereotypical.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He also loved the circus that came to our town every year in the fall. Probably because they didn't do a great job of checking for IDs at the one little tent that sold alcohol, but he also genuinely enjoyed the show. When he invited me, I told him at first that I wasn't sure, but he kept pestering me about it, telling me if I was a good girlfriend I would come along. I couldn't think of an excuse to get out of it, so I finally agreed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Before the main circus started, it wasn't actually too bad. Sure, there were enough people and loud sounds to set my teeth on edge, but I wasn't </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>scared</em>
  </b>
  <em> like I expected to be.</em>
  <em>
    <span> I'd had nightmares about circuses, but they were all so dark and ominous and frightening. This was just a bunch of kids, overenthusiastic and shouting, and some exhausted parents. None of the eerieness of my nightmares. And Bradley bought me kettle corn, which was a nice distraction. We wandered around for a while, him with his definitely illegal beer and me with my bottle of water, until the show in the big tent was due to start.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That was when I started getting apprehensive. It had been years since the clown incident, but I couldn't help being frightened of them in a way that went deeper than my fear of circuses in general. As I sat down with Bradley, clutching my kettle corn, I just hoped that the show would be over quickly, and that he wouldn't try to volunteer either of us for audience participation.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. The clowns were unnerving, but without being too close and too overwhelmed like I had been as a child, it wasn't horrible. I started to think that my fear of circuses was just a childhood overreaction.<br/></span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And then, after the show ended, Bradley and I were heading back to his obnoxious truck, when a woman grabbed me by the arm. She was shorter than me by a good bit - though I'm pretty tall - and had brown hair and intense eyes. I stopped and looked at her, and she said, "Don't leave here alone. Make sure your friend is still himself."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She had an accent, something British, and sounded so serious I was a little taken aback. I nodded, then ran to catch up with Bradley. He hadn't noticed when I stopped, I suppose. As we headed back, a little tent off to the side caught my attention. The sign outside of it called it a 'Figurine Display Room', written in this odd red font, the paint peeling off of the white wood. It was exactly the sort of thing that showed up in my nightmares.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Through a gap in the opening of the tent, I could see plastic humanoid shapes, standing in neat rows. Some of them were angled to face outwards, and their faces were molded into horrible grins as they looked at me. One was a clown, and its teeth were bared like some sort of animal.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bradley paused and looked at it, saying he'd never seen the tent before. He was looking like he wanted to go inside, but I told him I felt sick and that I wanted to go home - which was true - and that seemed to snap him out of it. He took me home, and the whole time, I had this sudden relief, like I'd dodged a bullet.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bradley and I broke up not long after, and I forgot about the whole thing for a while. I graduated, applied for college, the whole shebang.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then I ran into the woman from the circus again. It was at one of those little Halloween costume stores that pops up in unused lots in malls, that always has surprisingly good costumes. Some of my friends dragged me along, since there was a frat party on Halloween and none of us had costumes to wear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was digging through a pile of dresses that were all skimpier than the cheerleading leotards I used to wear when I felt someone grab my arm. I looked up, and the woman from the circus was standing there. She looked a little… odd. Maybe it was the lighting of the store, or maybe she was sick or something, but her skin had a weird sheen to it and her eyes looked different from when I saw her at the circus. The color wasn't quite right, and they looked too shiny.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She asked me if I was finding everything alright, and when I nodded, she asked me if I was looking for a mask. There was a whole wall of malleable plastic face masks, all just a little too realistic to be anything but creepy. I told her no, I wasn't. The woman smiled strangely and told me it was probably for the best.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"They tend to get inside your head," she said. I didn't have any response to that. Thinking back on it, I don't think the woman ever blinked or breathed during our conversation.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I ended up leaving without buying anything, but my friend Alice bought one of the masks. It was meant to be a clown face, frozen in a weird grimace. She thought it was funny, I guess. I thought it was nightmarish, and... horribly similar to the figure from the circus.<br/></span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At the party a few days later, Alice wore the mask, along with a clown costume. We didn't spend much of the party together at first, but when I did see her, she was acting odd. Staring at people, that plastic grimace on the clown face twisting unnaturally. More than once, I turned around to see her standing there, looking at me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Something about the loud music and the crowd of people made the party feel like the circus had, when I was six. Overwhelming and impersonal and terrifying. Alice's mask didn't help at all. I couldn't tell if the eyes were part of the mask or her own, but they were dark and frightening as they looked at me. I couldn't stop thinking about how nobody would know if I went missing, how nobody would care if Alice took my face. I'm not sure where that thought came from, but it scared me. The idea that she could take my face and become me and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe around midnight, Alice tried to pull me out of the building. She said she had something to show me, and her voice </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>sounded</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> like Alice. But the words weren't quite right, the inflection just a little strange. I turned her down and stayed inside. When I turned to go, I could feel her eyes on me through the mask.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I went back to the costume shop the day after the party to talk to the woman again, to ask her what she had to do with all of that, but it was gone. Not surprising, really. Those kinds of places don't have a long lifespan. Still, it was unnerving.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I was walking back to my dorm, I saw the woman again. She didn't grab me this time. She didn't even talk to me. But as she passed me on the street, she looked right at me. Her eyes looked shiny and inhuman, unblinking as she made eye contact with me. She shook her head once, and then kept walking. It was weird. Like she was trying to tell me something, but I had no idea what.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Alice is back to normal, now. I think. Sometimes, at night, she'll get a strange look in her eye and watch me without speaking. And she still has the clown mask. But I haven't seen the woman again, and… I think that's a good thing, in this case.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That woman sounds an awful lot like Clara. And the circus… One of the old statements from John mentioned that Clara was investigating - no, </span>
  <em>
    <span>infiltrating</span>
  </em>
  <span> a circus. Saxon said he went to America to avoid a circus, too. Maybe they're all connected."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Loud exhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Who am I kidding, of course they are. If John's death and Missy and Saxon can all tie together, what's stopping a weird circus from being the key to Clara quitting?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I still don't know how she managed that, though. Leaving the Institute is… difficult. Graham tried to, once, and said he couldn't make himself hand in the paperwork. Like something was stopping him, physically.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"However Clara did it, she clearly didn't get out from all the supernatural stuff entirely. Cursed masks are pretty run for the mill in Artifact Storage. I saw plenty of them. Some were harmless, some seemed to possess the wearer, some were just creepy. I don't think I ever saw a clown mask, but I might see if I can look through the reports for the other masks, just in case."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"No luck on the clown mask front. Apparently we have mime, jester, and harlequin masks, but no clown. Oddly enough, all three of those were reported purchased in the past decade from a small Halloween costume shop somewhere in America. They're all confirmed supernatural artifacts, but we don't have concrete ideas of what they </span>
  <em>
    <span>do.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Maybe Ms. Heath's friend wasn't the first victim.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"As for Ms. Heath herself, she was reported missing in 2007, and her body was found skinned and hanging from wires like a marionette in a local theater. The incident was not solitary, as Alice Snappe was found in a similar condition the same day. The killer was never found.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It could have been another wearer of the mask, or… it could have been Clara. I don't want to believe it was, but it's not impossible. She could have gotten drawn in too deep with whatever the circus really is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hopefully it's just a coincidence. By now, I'm not sure if I even mean that when I say it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: paranoia, being watched</p><p>Sorry for not posting yesterday, I had a busy weekend and got behind! Plus, I had to rearrange some major plot points of this fic so that things flowed better</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Nardole hasn't replied to my email about the most recent statement. Not sure if he just doesn't want to talk about it over email, or something else, but either way, it gives me a chance to work through the backlog instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I may have been a little hasty in deciding to do two statements a week. It wasn't bad for a bit, but now it's starting to get exhausting. But I can't exactly stop. There's too many to get through, and if I ever want to get started organizing the older statements… I've got to keep up the pace. I have been sleeping more, though that's not really a bad thing in the end. Idris certainly doesn't mind - she's started sleeping on my chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Anyways. Time to try to make a dent in this pile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of William Hare, regarding a feeling of being watched. Original statement given March 20th, 1987. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I know how I sound. I've told people about this before, and they've all called me crazy, or paranoid. I </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>know</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> how I sound. But it's true, and I'm not crazy, and they're still watching me even though I can't see them doing it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The first one was at my job. I am - used to be - a banker. Lots of security cameras, for obvious reasons. They'd just installed new ones when it started, though. I would be sitting at my desk, talking to someone, and I'd get this prickle at the back of my neck. Like someone was watching me. Nobody ever was, though. No human, at least.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I figured out it was the camera after a few days. There was one right behind my desk, so that in case of a robbery, they'd have a better chance of seeing the robber's face. Supposedly. But I just knew it was watching me, not anyone else. It was always fixed so that the lens was pointed right at the back of my head, like it wanted to make sure I knew I was being watched.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One time, I even asked the security guys if I could look at the footage. I don't remember what reason I gave them, but Dan and I were friends, so he let me. Sure enough, the angle of the camera was too low to catch the faces of anyone who would be standing in front of me - it was pinpoint-focused on me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But I figured maybe it was just installed like that, and nobody'd realized. Dan promised me he'd move it so that it'd be more effective, and maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. Whichever it was, the camera still pointed directly at me when I came in the next day.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It took me a while to realize the footage was going somewhere else, though. Dan mentioned to me that some of the footage had been corrupted, once, offhand, and I asked which cameras it had been from. I wish I'd been surprised to hear it was just mine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That got me thinking, though. Maybe the footage wasn't being corrupted - maybe it was going somewhere else. Some government agency, or some stalker. I'm not much of a technology guy, but it seems like covering your tracks by corrupting the original footage makes sense. Which meant it wasn't just a series of coincidences, either; someone was watching me for a reason.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm still not sure why, to be honest. Don't know whether they want to kill me, or get some sort of information out of me, or what, but there's something watching me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I turned in my resignation after a few more weeks. I couldn't stand it, the unblinking watching going on. It made my skin crawl every time, and it made me so nervous I almost threw up more than once.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>A<em><span>fter that, I got a job in a secondhand store. No security cameras there, just me behind the counter and whatever people came in to buy things. But there was a poster hanging on the wall opposite the counter. A movie poster, I think, but there was no title on it or anything. Just a woman in a dress, her mouth open as if she were screaming, and a shadowy figure behind her with glowing red eyes.</span></em></p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Like with the camera, it took me a little while to realize the eyes were watching me. I would get up from the counter to put new donations away, or to show a customer where something was, and the gaze of that creature would follow me around the shop. Sometimes, when I was alone, I could see the eyes blink.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I tried covering up the poster by taping paper over it. The woman who ran the shop was never in, so she wasn't there to care. Even through the paper, though, I could feel it watching me. When the lights got low, I could see their bloody glow shining through the paper, fixed on </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>me.</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I quit that job, too. Tried working in another bank. It only got worse there. It wasn't just one camera, then; it was all of them. From the moment I entered the building, I could hear them rotate to watch me. Security even asked me about it, but I told them the truth: I didn't know why they were doing it, or how to stop it. I was… politely asked to leave the job not long after. Apparently, I posed a significant security threat. Since I was close to quitting anyways, I didn't much mind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I tried a corporate job, too, working the phones. That wasn't too bad at first, as there weren't too many cameras on the floor I was on, but… the phones were recording me. Not in the way they recorded everyone else's calls for legal reasons, but in the same way the cameras were recording me. So that something else - some</span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>one</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> else - could know what I was doing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Someone has been watching and hearing my every move for three years, now, and I still don't know who or why. They've even followed me home. I covered all the eyes on the photos in my flat, and I keep my windows closed, and I don't even have an answering machine anymore, but it doesn't matter. They're watching me, </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>seeing</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> me everywhere I go and I can't escape it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I tried to talk to someone about it - my GP - he told me I was delusional. There was a poster in his room, a huge, close-up diagram of an eye, and the whole time I was in there it was looking at me. When I came in, it had been staring to the right, but as soon as I sat down, it looked straight at me. But when I said that, he just asked me if I had a fever, if I'd been drinking or doing any drugs, if I had a family history of schizophrenia. The answer to all of those is no, by the way. In case you care. In case whatever's watching doesn't already know.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He had me tested anyways, but every test came back clean. Nothing physically wrong with me, at least. So it was either all in my imagination, or it was real. I already knew which one it was, but I got sent to a psychiatrist anyways. She talked to me about stress and my mental wellbeing, but I couldn't focus on that. There was a photograph on her desk of her with a man and two children, and all four of them were watching me. Unblinking, unwavering, just staring straight at me from her desk as she prattled on about how anxiety can impact the brain. I was anxious, sure, but it was because of the eyes, not the cause of them.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Even down here, I can feel them watching me. There aren't any pictures, any cameras, any </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>anything,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> but I know I'm being watched. The prickle in the back of my neck is so familiar by now. I feel it in my nightmares, too; nightmares of eyes swarming around me like wasps, watching as I panic and scream and run. It's a little less dramatic in waking life. They watch me as I eat, as I walk and talk and live my life, and I can't do anything about it because they're everywhere.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There's not even a reason for it. I don't live an exciting life. I think writing all this out has helped me figure out what they're after, though. My fear. My terror and my knowledge that there is nothing I can do to stop them from watching me every breathing moment of my existence. They find it </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>entertaining,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> perhaps. Amusing. Maybe that's what you're after, too, down in this horrid little basement. All your statements from terrified people gathered in one place. Maybe the eyes are here, feeding on it all like they're feeding on me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I- I don't like this one. I don't like how it made me feel. It's uncomfortable. Maybe that's just because I've had the same feeling - like something is watching me down here. I thought it was just Saxon, since I haven't felt it since I came back, but…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It doesn't matter. I read the statement, I'll have my assistants do some research on Mr. Hare, and then I can forget about it."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Except I won't. I haven't forgotten the details of one statement I've read aloud since I started working here. I could probably list them in order, names and everything. And I'm good at memorizing weird lists of things, but I've never been </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And… back in the tunnels. Saxon mentioned compulsion when I asked him some questions. He talked about it like he knew something I didn't. Like he was used to it from John, maybe. That's another thing I shouldn't be able to remember so clearly, and I don't even know how it connects but I feel like it does."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's not like there's anyone I can ask. Kingsfield won't tell me even if I did, I'm sure of it, and my friends know even less than I do. I'll add it to the list of questions for Nardole, I suppose."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"While I had a bit of an existential crisis in my office, Yaz and Ryan found an obituary for Mr. Hare. He died in 1996 of a heart attack, unemployed and - according to a few close friends - deeply paranoid until the day he died. He requested that his body be cremated and the ashes given to his sister, Leanna, who had three children with her husband, Richard. Their names are, in descending order of age, Alfred, Therese, and Carlton. And I remembered all of that from looking at the print-out Ryan gave me </span>
  <em>
    <span>once.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Something is going on with me. I just don't know what. I... don't know if I <em>want</em> to know.<br/></span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Hallucinations, memory issues</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"I talked to Koschei again over the weekend. I'm still a fair bit freaked out about the whole… thing, from the last statement. I don't know what's going on, and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate</span>
  </em>
  <span> not knowing. Even if I won't like the answer. But talking to him helped, a little. We met up at my flat this time, just so he could meet Idris. She loved him, of course.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Aside from that, Nardole finally replied. All he said was that yes, it was definitely Clara, and that it had to do with the circus. Apparently anything more detailed would have been difficult to send, which makes sense. This kind of thing tends to get corrupted digitally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And since he didn't send any other statements, this one is from the backlog again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Ruth Clayton, regarding her memories. Original statement given February 26th, 2009. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was born in 1975. I grew up in a lighthouse near Gloucester. My parents weren't the most social people, but I never minded living in the middle of nowhere as a kid. I would explore the beach and the fields around the lighthouse, and spend hours up at the top imagining myself as the protagonist in a story. When my parents died, they left it to me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I moved to Gloucester proper in 1999, and met my husband Lee not long after that. We got married in 2004, and we've lived in Gloucester together for years. I'm a tour guide, and he sells bathroom appliances.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm saying all of this because I can't be sure if it's true anymore. Any of it. I know my own life, but I don't know if the life I'm living is mine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Let me explain.<br/>
</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was my birthday when it started. I'd just turned 34. Allan at the coffee shop made me a cake, even. He's… a little obsessed with me. More specifically, my marital status. He always goes on and on about how Lee is up to something and I deserve better. It's worrying, honestly, but not anything stalker-ish.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was standing in front of Gloucester Cathedral handing out fliers for my tours when I started to get dizzy and had to sit down. That's never happened before - I've stood out there in rain, snow, and every other kind of weather for hours, and never gotten dizzy like I did then. As I sat down on a bench, though, something happened.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Calling it a memory isn't right. It felt more like… like being at a play, watching the actors perform right in front of you. When I closed my eyes, I saw Lee standing in front of me, his hand outstretched, reaching for me. But he didn't really look like Lee. He was dressed differently, and had a cold look in his eyes. I took his hand, and we ran. Not sure where, or why, but we just ran. I felt happy like that, even though I couldn't shake the feeling that something was chasing me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The vision faded after a few seconds, but I was still so dizzy that I needed to stay sitting for another half an hour before I could walk again. I didn't have another episode, or flashback, or whatever I should call them that day. I gave my tours and tried not to think about it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I got home, I told Lee what had happened. He told me I should see a doctor - which I agreed with - and asked me if I was feeling alright. I said that I was fine. I didn't tell him that I couldn't shake the woozy feeling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A good night's sleep didn't really help, but I scheduled an appointment for the day after that and took some painkillers. Originally, I was going to take aspirin, but… something made me stop short of getting the bottle. Some memory of an allergy, or a bad reaction to it before - though I'd never had any trouble taking aspirin before. I found another kind to take, in the end.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was another day of tours, and I didn't have any more flashbacks. I thought maybe it was a one-off sort of thing; dehydration, or food poisoning. Maybe I had just imagined it all - though I suppose that was the issue.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next day, I went to the doctor. There's no point in the details. He told me I was probably just tired, and it was nothing to worry about. By that point, I was starting to agree with him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Naturally, the moment I got home after the appointment, I had another… episode. I was standing on the deck of a massive ship, staring out at the stormy waters. Lee - looking the same as he had in the last one - stood next to me. He said something about needing to get out. Of what, he didn't say, but the memory of me nodded. It began to rain, the water soaking through my clothing, so Lee and I went below deck. On our way down, we passed a young man in what looked like some kind of body armor, and he saluted us.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I came back to myself before I could see wherever Lee and I were going, and I felt horribly dizzy again. My head ached, my clothing felt damp, and my mouth was dry, tasting of salt. Almost like I really had been standing on a ship, floating somewhere in the ocean.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I called in sick to work preemptively for the next day. Whatever these things were, I was determined to find out and fix it. By the time Lee got home, I'd spent hours researching anything even tangentially related to the strange memories I'd been having. He found me at the computer, several hundred words deep in a medical paper about the causes of hallucinations and how they relate to various areas of the brain, and made me take a break to eat and rest my eyes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As we ate dinner, I told Lee about the second vision I'd had. He looked concerned, and asked if I'd called the doctor to tell him I'd had another one. Of course I hadn't; he wasn't any use the first time, and I doubted he'd be any more help now. Still, at Lee's insistence, I did call the office and inform him. But unless I wanted to schedule another pointless appointment, there wasn't much he could do.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I asked Lee if he thought I should see a psychiatrist later, as we were getting ready to go to sleep. He said that I should probably wait; see if my day off helped me feel any better, or at least give it until I'd had a third episode. It seemed like a good idea.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don't usually remember my dreams, but that night, I did. It was a continuation of the vision I'd had earlier, of the ship. Lee and I were walking through the corridors, heading for a specific room. Our room, I think. He kept talking about our mission, our next goal. Something about a Division, or </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>the</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> Division. Whatever it was, it was capital-letter important, and memory-me knew what he meant.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I woke up, Lee had already gone to work, and I had that same awful, pounding headache. I took more painkillers - not aspirin - and settled back in to keep researching. Hallucinations, new memories, flashbacks, the Division; anything I could think of that might help. I didn't find anything close to what I was experiencing, though. A few odd holistic websites talking about astral projection and all that, but nothing scientific. Nothing concrete. Nothing helpful.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I didn't tell Lee about the dream. It would only have worried him more, and I had already decided that seeing a doctor again wouldn't be much help. There was no good explanation they could provide for what I was seeing, short of a referral to a psych ward that I didn't need. I knew I wasn't crazy. Something crazy was happening to me, sure, but I wasn't losing it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next day, I had to go back in to work. I stood outside of the cathedral with my pamphlets in the morning, gave my tours in the afternoon, but it was all distant. By rote, I suppose. My heart wasn't in it; I was too busy thinking about how odd it was that I hadn't had a dream the night before. Or at least, not one that I remembered.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I got home before Lee did, and as I was working on making dinner for the two of us, I had another vision. Lee and I, again, carrying guns and standing in front of a warehouse. We made eye contact, nodded, and walked in. The warehouse was full of wooden boxes, all labelled with warnings that they weren't to be opened under any circumstances. There were a handful of guards, patrolling around the warehouse. As Lee and I entered, they began to shout, but we shot them quickly. Memory-me didn't even flinch at the sound of gunfire. Then I reached into my pocket, pulled out a flask of liquid and a lighter, and threw the flask. Whatever was inside it smelled sharp and chemical, and it caught fire quickly. The boxes began to burn, and some of them sounded like they were </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>screaming.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> As if they were in pain. As if something inside them was in pain.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A radio on my hip crackled to life and ordered us to leave the building, but Lee and I stood there in the burning building, not answering. After a few more demands that we evacuate, the radios went silent. Together, we pulled them from our belts and dropped them on the floor, then ran, hand in hand.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That's when I snapped out of it. I knew, somehow, that that was the 'getting out' that Lee had mentioned. Getting out of whatever job it was that he and I were trapped in, by faking our deaths. It all felt so real, so </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>vivid.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> The heat from the flames had left my skin warm, and I was afraid if I looked down at my clothes I would see blood splatters from the guards. I didn't, when I finally checked.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I know my life. I </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>know</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> that what I saw wasn't real. But… that didn't stop me from checking the records, looking at all the stuff from our childhoods that Lee and I kept in the spare room. Books with notes scribbled in the margins from secondary school English classes, primary school art projects, my old stuffed dragon that my parents gave me on my eighth birthday. Reminders that this life was real, and that I'd lived it all.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I still couldn't quite believe it, though. All of that could have been faked, or could only tell part of the story. I thought I remembered my life after secondary school, but how was I supposed to prove any of it?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I decided that I needed to go to the lighthouse where I grew up. If that was real, then surely the rest of it had to be, too.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Still, I couldn't exactly leave without a warning, especially not when it was already late and Lee was going to be home soon. Calling in sick to work again would be difficult, too. So, I made plans to go over the weekend. Just to prove to myself that I was only imagining everything else, that there was no trace of reality in any of it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The rest of the week, I was on edge, worrying about if - </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>when</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> - I would have another vision. What I would see, what new fear it would bring me. And yet, I never had so much as a headache the entire time. It was as if, once I'd decided to prove it wasn't real, whatever was causing the visions backed off.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Finally, the weekend came, and I got ready to go to the lighthouse. Lee offered to come with me, but I told him I needed to go alone. Whatever I found there, whether it relieved my suspicions or not, was my own. He respected that. That's why I love him. He listens to me, and even when he's worried, he knows I can handle my own problems.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Driving to the lighthouse felt strange, almost ominous. It was bright and sunny out, but I felt like it should have been dark and stormy. Like on the ship in my memories.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I parked at the end of the driveway and got out of the car. I could taste the salt on the air, rolling in with the tide. The grass was stiff underneath my feet as I stepped towards the front door. Even after so many years, I kept the key to the door on my key ring, and I unlocked it easily.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Inside, it looked… it looked exactly like my memories of home. After my parents died, I had never been back to clear things out. There were still clothes folded in a basket, sitting on the old rocking chair. It was dusty, but aside from that, it was almost like my parents had stepped out to go shopping.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I moved the basket and sat down. As I did, my head started to swim, and I knew I was about to have another vision.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was of Lee and I, stepping into the lighthouse. Moving things, arranging them just as they were in real life, talking about my past like it was some kind of story. Lee said something about how I would need to believe it, so it needed to be close to the truth, and memory-me agreed. They kept going, adding more details to my life. Distantly, without any real emotion, just another step in their plan.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm not sure how long it was before I snapped out of it, but it had gotten dark out. I knew I shouldn't sleep in the lighthouse, the same way I knew I shouldn't take aspirin. Driving home with a headache in the dark didn't sound like a good idea, but it was the only option I had.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I got home, Lee was waiting for me. He said he'd called me, and when I checked my mobile, I saw that he was right. At some point, I must have put it on silent, though, because I didn't remember getting any calls. I told him that I hadn't found anything weird, and… I didn't tell him about the vision. We both went to bed, but I stayed up for hours after, just turning over everything in my mind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>know</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> none of it was real. It can't have been. I remember my childhood, and I remember growing up, and I remember meeting Lee and falling in love and getting married. My own life is not a mystery to me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then again, I wouldn't be here if I truly believed that. I guess I just wanted to write it all down, to see if it made any more sense like this. It doesn't, of course. I sound like I'm imagining things. And maybe I am. I don't know anymore.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I relate to this one, in a way. Not being sure if you're imagining strange things about yourself or if there really is something awful going on, having no way to tell whether you're going crazy. Mrs. Clayton and I are in the same boat there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Though, the fact that her statement had to be recorded like this is a good sign that she was telling the truth, at least to some degree. Whether those visions of hers were really memories repressed by… something, or just the effects of something toying with her, I don't know. She wasn't crazy, though, I'm sure of that much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think I'll do the research on this one personally. Not that I don't think my friends could handle it, but it might make me feel better."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"From what I could find, Mrs. Clayton is still alive and at least somewhat well. She's also still living in Gloucester, married to Lee Clayton. I reached out to her for a follow-up statement, but obviously that will have to wait.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's reassuring, on some level, to know that she's okay. What exactly it means for her, I don't know, but… at least she's alive. In a funny sort of way, it gives me a bit of hope that I'll survive too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: guns, gunshot wounds, minor character death described<br/>In which it shows that my US History class just hit the Civil War unit, and that my brother has an unhealthy obsession with antique guns!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Graham found more of those worms in the archives today. Apparently there were half a dozen of them in the office when he got here, though I didn't see any on my way in. He said that when he squished them, they were - and I quote - 'oddly solid'. Whatever that means.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I could send a memo to Kingsfield, but honestly? He's just going to tell us that it's archive business, and not his problem. And of course, calling an exterminator is out of the question, since the chemicals would wreak havoc on the statements. Not to mention that we'd have to empty the whole institute to fumigate the place. Maybe during lunch I can pop out and get bug spray or something."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I got another statement from Nardole. He didn't mention it having any connection to Bill or Clara, just that he thought this one belonged here. Really, I should probably ignore it and focus on the backlog, but I hate to leave a statement unread. It just feels </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm worried that that has something to do with the weird stuff I've been noticing. My memory, and… other things, too. When I came in here this morning, I crossed the entire main room to my office without needing to turn the lights on. And sure, maybe that's just because I've been here long enough to memorize the layout, but I could see exactly where everything was. In pitch darkness."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right. Statement of Sebastian Lessard, regarding an antique gun. Original statement given September 4th, 1993. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm not any kind of pansy, alright? I've got more guns than fingers, and I know how to use all of them. I hunt regularly, and cook the meat myself. I used to play football back in high school. Quarterback. So I'm not </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>scared</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> of what I saw. Just… figured other people oughta know, I guess.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I've been a Civil War reenactor for five years now. Living in Gettysburg makes it easy. I spend hours every week training with my unit, and then in the summer we all meet up at the battlefield and fight. My wife, Nancy, helps run the faire, and my son, Logan, is going to start training in a year or two.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because of all that, I've got a few replica rifles at home, on top of my hunting rifles and a few pistols. Now, I'm not saying I don't like my replicas, but I've always wanted a real Civil War rifle. Not to use in the reenactments or anything, since they aren't allowed anyhow. Just to keep at home. A little piece of history.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dan runs the unit I'm part of - 1st Pennsylvania Rifles Cohort B - but he also runs the gun store most of us buy our replicas and ammo from. He usually gives a discount if you're in the same cohort, or buying for the big reenactment, so everyone knows him. The two of us went to high school together, though, so he'll call me when he's got something interesting in stock. That's how I heard about the gun.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was an early Gatling machine gun that was used in the siege of Petersburg. Dan told me about it, said it looked like something I would be interested in. He was right. It was exactly the kind of thing I'd been looking for to add to my collection. I told him I'd come over and take a look at it when I had the chance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Despite the years, it was in great condition. The outer casing was shiny and there was hardly any weathering, except what looked like genuine battle wear and tear. I would've thought it was a replica, but Dan had tested the metal, and it was really 130 years old. When I asked him where he got it, he said a friend of his who dealt in historical artifacts bought it from a guy, then handed it off to him since he had a better audience for that kind of thing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I wanted to buy it, of course. It was expensive as hell, but worth every penny. I didn't have the money at the time, so I asked Dan to hold on to it until I got paid. He didn't mind. Said he'd tell me if anyone else wanted to buy it first, too.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>By the end of the month, I was back and buying the gun. Dan helped me load it into the bed of my truck, since it was too bulky to get up by myself, and he told me to take good care of it. I said I would, and then I latched up my tailgate and headed home. Logan wanted to look at it, of course, but I told him he wasn't supposed to touch it without my permission. He's a good kid, but he's got a bad habit of breaking things when he isn't careful.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a while, that was that. The Gatling stayed with the rest of my guns in the basement, except for the pistol in the bedside drawer, and I wasn't worried about it. When I had a barbeque for my unit, I showed it off to a few of them. Tim said I should bring it to the Gettysburg reenactment, but that was a joke. Gatlings weren't used in the battle, first, and ours is a replica-only reenactment. Still, I said I'd think about it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two weeks later, we were running drills over the weekend like normal, and I could've sworn I saw a man in uniform collapse to the ground like he was shot. A huge, bloody stain spread outward from a line of bullet holes in his chest, where his shirt was torn. He was right in the middle of the field, so I thought for sure that someone else would've seen it. But nobody did a thing. It was like they hadn't noticed at all.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I blinked, and a moment later, the man was gone. Bloody patch on the ground where he'd fallen and everything. It was weird, but I didn't say anything to anyone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Next week, the same thing happened. Halfway through our drills, I saw a man hit the ground, jerking backwards from an invisible impact. This time, he was close enough for me to see his wounds properly. They were definitely bullet holes. Several of them, close together enough that it would've been tricky to manage with a rifle. I knew it had to have been from a Gatling like the one I'd bought.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After a few seconds, the guy disappeared again. I kept going through my drills, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Both of the guys had been dressed like Civil War soldiers. Probably Confederate, but it's not like there was a real organized uniform for either side, generally speaking. I'd almost have thought they were reenactors, but the fabric looked authentic in a way that ours doesn't. We try our best to replicate what they would've worn, of course, but some things are nearly impossible to do.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I tried to ignore it, after that. Every weekend, I'd see the same thing. A different person, but the same sort of injuries. Like they were all being shot by the same kind of gun. But if I ignored it, then they would disappear after a little while, and it was easier to just pretend they weren't there. Nobody would have believed me, anyhow. Seeing ghosts on a Civil War battlefield, sure, but the field we ran drills in wasn't ever a battleground. And I'm not some coward who's gonna get scared of a few imagined soldiers, either.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>By the time July came and it was time for the Gettysburg reenactment, I'd gotten real good at ignoring all of that. Now, the thing about the reenactments is that we really try to get in the spirit of the thing. We sleep in authentic tents, wear authentic clothing, eat authentic food, all that. It's a three-day battle, so it's usually five days total. The first day, we set up our tents and the people who do impressions come around. Days two through four is the battle. That's the best part. Finally putting all those months of training to use. Then on day five, we clean up and pack up our tents and work out the plans for the next year. If anyone's going to change their unit, that's usually when they do it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>On the first day, I got up bright and early to head over to the field. Nancy and Logan were up, too, so that they could get there and sign all the vendors in. All the paperwork and all that goes through Nancy and a few of the other ladies that manage the faire. While they did that, I was off setting up the tent. It wasn't my year to bring it, it was Travis's, but I still needed to help pitch it. It's a four person job at least, with all the cloth and the poles that need maneuvering.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Once the tent was set up, I went off to find Nancy and eat my lunch with her. Technically, we're only supposed to eat at the proper times, but since it was the first day and Dan was also off eating with his wife, it didn't matter much. Then I headed back to the tent and played poker with my tent-mates. Badly, of course. I've never been good at poker.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We had supper 'round the fire and I took first watch so that I could get better sleep. Taking watch is never that bad, since it mostly means catching up with the other unlucky folks who have it at the same time. I found out that Ben's daughter got accepted into law school, and that Bella's sister finally got married, and I got to brag on my Gatling somewhat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next day was the start of the first battle. It started at eleven for the cavalry, but since I'm a rifleman, that just meant I sat around waiting. By two, though, it was time for my unit to head for the field. I had my rifle ready, and we began to march.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As we did, I saw more men than normal join us. They fell right into step with the rest, but there was something odd about them. Normally, there's a bit of talking between the men, but these new arrivals were dead silent. They just stared ahead and marched.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When we reached the battlefield, we readied our rifles and began firing. Beside us, the new men did the same. Some of them seemed a little rushed, but I put it down to it being their first reenactment. On the order to fire, they did, but I saw real bullets fly from their rifles. We're only supposed to use blanks. I looked at Dan to see if he'd do anything, but he didn't even seem to notice. He just ordered everyone to reload and continue firing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I kept going, but I also kept an eye on the other men. Sure enough, on the next order to fire, their rifles spat out bullets. No one on the other side was acting like they got hit, though. Except for the people who were supposed to, but I could tell when the blood was fake.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then I saw a line of men fall, all at once. Even from a distance, I could see the line of bullet holes in their clothes, just the same as the ones I'd been seeing for weeks. They all fell backwards, but none of the medics came to grab them like they should have. The dirt was turning red beneath them from all the blood. Around me, everyone kept firing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A few minutes later, just when I'd started to convince myself I'd imagined it, I fired again, and my rifle jerked like I'd fired a bullet. I know the difference between firing a blank and a live round, I can feel it. And it felt live. I even saw the bullet fire, heading straight for another one of the reenactors. It hit him square in the chest, and then the wound almost seemed to multiply. A line of bullet holes tore across his chest, and he hit the ground in seconds.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This time, though, it wasn't anything like the times I'd seen someone collapse during drills. The man fell, and nobody reacted, and then… after a few moments, he stood back up. There was still blood on his shirt and bullet holes bleeding in his chest, but he stood up, prepared his rifle for another shot, and fired at our side. He hit one of the other men, who did the same sort of thing. He fell, then got back up and kept firing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>wrong.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> As they moved closer to our position on the hill, I could see dead-eyed, bleeding men filling out the Confederate ranks. All of them had lines of bullets through their chests, but kept marching forward all the same.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the battle was over, I almost wanted to tell Dan I wasn't feeling well. I'm not a coward, but I didn't ever want to see that again. Luckily, I didn't have to make up some excuse, since Logan tripped and broke his ankle and needed to go to the hospital. It was enough of a reason to leave, and Dan understood.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I sat there in the hospital while the doctor was fixing Logan up, I dreaded the thought of going back the next day and seeing more of those blank walking corpses. I told Nancy I would stay home with Logan the rest of the week, so that she could go in and manage things. She was shocked, I think. I don't normally do that sort of thing. But I figured it might be better.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I still don't know what made me see that, or why it was just me seeing it. I even asked Travis if he saw anything weird, but he said everything seemed normal. I know what I saw was real, though. Maybe it was Hell. Maybe I saw where soldiers go, once they die. Just an endless cycle of battles and deaths. Certainly sounds like Hell. Certainly </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>looked</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> like Hell, too. The empty agony on the soldiers' faces was enough to make me sick. I just hope that I don't find out first hand.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"All of that ghost talk almost sounds like Mr. Brown's statement about the Church of the Lightless Flame. Persisting after death, continuing destruction… it's pretty similar. But there's a different </span>
  <em>
    <span>vibe</span>
  </em>
  <span> to it. The ghosts Mr. Lessard described sounded miserable, but the Church saw it as something good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Two sides of the same coin, maybe. Definitely something I'm adding to the sticky note line - which is, by the way, taking up entirely too much of my desk now. I've got at least twenty of them stuck to different bits. There's too many things happening, too many mysteries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Speaking of, though, I did get a reply from Mrs. Clayton. She said she would be happy to give a follow-up statement, which is a nice change of pace. So, I'll be going up to Gloucester next Friday to have a chat with her."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Graham's research shows that Mr. Lessard died in 2015 of a stroke. He wasn't registered for that year's reenactment, but I'm not sure whether that was just because of his age or because of the ghosts. Either way, his son didn't seem to inherit his father's passion for the hobby. There was a listing on Ebay for a Gatling gun awfully similar to the one Mr. Lessard described in his statement - in remarkably good condition, and certified from a gun store in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hopefully, Mr. Lessard is resting in peace, and not in the awful afterlife he saw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: semi-graphic depictions of animal death (via car accident) and very graphic depictions of animal decomposition for both a domestic pet and a wild animal, canon-typical worms<br/>Friendly advice from me, who posted this while having breakfast and Regretted It: don't eat and read this</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"It's already August first. A little strange to think that I'll have been working in the archives for six months, soon. Despite everything that's happened, it's barely been any time. I mean, it's been less than a month since Koschei and I found each other again, but it feels like so much longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Speaking of, he called me this morning to see if he could come in to give his statement next week. To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten about that. We've always been so busy with other things when we meet up, and his job doesn't really give him much time to stop by in the middle of the day. But he managed to schedule a day off for next Monday, so hopefully we can get that handled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh. Between him and Mrs. Clayton's statement on Friday, I'll be doing two live ones back to back. That's… interesting. Maybe not good. I know in one recording John said he wasn't taking live statements, but he never said </span>
  <em>
    <span>why.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Something about not giving Missy the satisfaction, I think. Whatever that means. But it doesn't make any sense to have Ruth write down her statement when we've got the time planned already, and Koschei sounded excited to give his."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm sure it'll be fine. Maybe I'll just take a break from the paper ones for the rest of the week, after Koschei gives his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Sophia Muñoz, regarding a piece of roadkill. Original statement given November 12th, 1999. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Roadkill isn't awfully common around England, compared to America. Sure, sometimes you'll see an unfortunate deer or fox, but centuries of hunting have trained them to avoid people, and therefore to avoid roads. Usually. Some animals are just stupid.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Like Penny. Penny was my cat when I was a kid, named such because she was a pretty shade of coppery orange and I wasn't a very creative child. She was affectionate as could be, and had the total intelligence of a box of rocks. One day, she slipped out the front door and got herself hit by a car, and that was the end of that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was probably for the best that she got hit when she did. We were going to be moving to Manchester in a few months for my papa's job, and Penny probably would have wound up in a shelter when we did. Bringing a pet over would've been too expensive. Still, I was ten and devastated at the time. Devastated and intrigued, I guess I should say.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Until that point, I'd never seen anything dead up close. Penny wasn't much of a hunter, so there weren't exactly dead mice or birds on our carpets. Her corpse was the first dead animal I'd gotten to look at. It was strange, how much she looked like she had when she was alive, if you could ignore the places the tires of the car had broken her bones and made them jut out of her skin.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That didn't disturb me. I was surprisingly fine, looking at Penny's dead, slightly mangled but mostly just </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>squished</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> body. My parents got a little concerned, but they seemed more relieved when I asked if we could hold a funeral for her. That was normal behavior, apparently. But Penny'd gotten run over in the winter, and the ground was frozen too solid to bury her. I was insistent that she be buried, though, so my father put her corpse in a few layers of plastic bags and stuck it in our freezer.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I would check on it, every couple of days. Morbid curiosity and wonder, I think. Watching her decompose so very slowly was quite interesting to me as a child. And, for a little while, I was perfectly okay with it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And then the maggots set in. I pulled the layers of plastic bags wrapped around Penny's small, curled up corpse out of the freezer, eager to see what new bits of her flesh had gone frozen and grey from the cold. As I did, I felt something move inside the bags, wriggling beneath my fingers and through Penny's flesh. I nearly dropped the bag in shock, but I couldn't resist the urge to look and see what was causing it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The maggots were small, barely visible thanks to the plastic. Just little squiggles of white, writhing around through ginger fur and dead meat. I was horrified. Watching Penny decay was one thing, but watching other creatures eat her body was something else entirely. It felt wrong. Sacrilegious, almost. She was dead, and that should have been the end of things. I didn't even know how the maggots got in in the first place, but I knew they were awful things. Disturbing Penny's slumber.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>By then, it was just barely warm enough for the ground to have softened, and I begged my parents to bury her as soon as possible. I think I'd hoped that it would stop the rotting, or at least remove the temptation to look. My papa took the spade out to the back yard and dug a shallow hole, and I placed Penny's plastic-wrapped body in the grave. I could still see the maggots as she was covered back up with dirt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We moved to Manchester not long after, and I forgot, for the most part, about Penny and the maggots. Things like a new school, and new friends, and adjusting to a new life became more important than thinking about death, at least for a while. I would occasionally see dead animals and remember, but for the rest of my childhood, I moved on.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I hit an animal for the first time on a trip home to visit my grandparents in Texas. I was eighteen, and had rented a car for the trip, since there aren't exactly a lot of busses from the Dallas airport to Round Top. It was dark, I wasn't looking as carefully as I should have been, and the coyote came out of nowhere. The </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>thud</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> of it hitting the car shook the whole vehicle, but thankfully it didn't do any real damage. Still, I felt bad leaving a dead coyote in the middle of the road - even if it was a small, two lane thing that was barely paved. I pulled over into the sand, got out, and tried to figure out how to move it without getting anything on me or my clothing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The body was still warm, even though the air was chilly. It looked different from Penny's corpse; I hadn't run it over properly, just hit it, and so the fatal wound was from the impact, not the pressure. There was no broken skin, just a strange sagging in the midsection that spoke to broken bones and internal bleeding. The poor thing was certainly dead by the time I reached it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I ended up wrapping my shirt around my hands and tugging the body off to the side of the road, in the end. It wasn't the perfect solution, but it got the body out of the way. Then I got back in the car, and continued driving. The first thing I did when I reached my grandparents' house was change into a clean shirt, then put the dirty one in the wash. It wasn't bloody or anything, but I had no idea if the coyote was carrying diseases or parasites.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two nights into my stay, I heard something howling outside around midnight. I'd heard coyotes the previous night, and it didn't sound quite like that - raspier, more like ragged screaming. I got out of bed to look out the window, and I saw the coyote I hit standing in the lawn, staring right at me. Dead-eyed, jaws open at an unnaturally wide angle and dripping something that I thought at first to be saliva or rabies foam, and making that awful screaming sound. When I looked down at the puddle forming at its feet and saw it </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>writhing,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> I realized I'd been wrong. It wasn't rabid or drooling - it was rotting, swarming with maggots that were overflowing out of its mouth. The longer I stared back at those dark eyes, the more maggots I could see, creeping through sandy fur, in and out of holes in the flesh. It was almost hypnotizing, in an awful kind of way, watching the maggots squirm from the dirt back up into the coyote's legs, then pop out again through an ear or nostril or tongue.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I gathered the will to move, I almost wanted to shut the curtains, but the fear that it would move if I took my eyes off of it was too strong. As horrifying as it was at a distance, I didn't want it any closer. I knew those worms were hungry for more than dead, rotting flesh, and I knew they wouldn't hesitate to take mine if they had the chance. So instead, I shouted for my grandfather. I knew that he kept a gun somewhere in the house, and I hoped that would be enough to frighten the thing away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sure enough, once he woke up and came into my room, he went to get his gun. Apparently, the coyotes weren't normally so bold, and he made the same assumption that I had at first - that it was rabid. While he went out to shoot it, I was told to call animal control. I was still in my room, in front of the window, so I could see when he shot the coyote. It jerked, then fell to the ground, maggots still streaming in and out of it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When animal control showed up, the maggots were gone. Where they went, I don't know, but they were nowhere to be seen once the officials arrived and took the coyote to be tested for rabies. By the time any sort of results came back, though, I was back in England.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I still see the coyote in my nightmares, at times. White dripping from its jaws, the maggots falling to hit the ground, seeping down even deeper to reach Penny's grave. Slithering through the layers of dirty plastic to rest in her corpse. Disturbing what should be a peaceful, final rest.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Those maggots sound </span>
  <em>
    <span>far</span>
  </em>
  <span> too similar to the worms that've been in the archives for my liking. And that feeling of disgust Ms. Muñoz described is exactly what I've been feeling when I look at them. Not even the bug spray I got did much to get rid of them, so Graham's taken worm duty for now. Every time another one shows up, it's his job to kill it. I'd feel bad, but they're clearly some kind of infestation. If it gets any worse, I'm going to have to bring it up to Kingsfield. They might be a risk to the files. And us, obviously, but he cares less about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Point is, I know exactly what Ms. Muñoz means. Not so much about her views on death, but at least on the maggots."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Yaz was able to find Ms. Muñoz pretty easily - she's an embalmer in Manchester, and has her own funeral home. A bit of digging through medical records revealed that she spent some time in a hospital after her trip to America in 1997, though I couldn't figure out why. If I had to guess, though, I'd say it was for a parasite. Some kind of worm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> hope that the maggots she talked about aren't the same as the worms in the archives. If they are, then they might be a bigger risk than I thought. I'll bring up the possibility of exterminators to Kingsfield soon, just in case.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: What is, technically, gaslighting (but in a Weird Memory Shenanigans way, not a deliberately malicious way)</p><p>Ruth time!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"I'm recording this on my way to Gloucester. The train is pretty empty at this time of day, but even so, I don't think I'll keep the recorder on much longer. I've got some things I can read through on the ride - a few of the articles on the Midnight Corporation, as written by those reporters, Mr. Smith and Ms. Noble. Should make for interesting reading."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"The train's about five minutes from the stop, according to the announcement I just heard. I figured I should give a quick summary of what I read… though I doubt I'll forget any of it. Mr. Smith and Ms. Noble have been going after the Midnight Corporation for a few years now, ever since they started up their cruise line in 2008. At first, it was just for their suspicious funding sources, since the Midnight Corporation sort of sprang into existence out of nowhere in 2005, courtesy of Davros Kaled. Where he got the money, nobody knows, but Mr. Smith and Ms. Noble suggest that it came from the Kyberman family. I did a little searching, since I recognized the name, and it turns out that they're one of the Institute's biggest funders as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There's also articles on the Sheffield hotel, but the one on the Russian spa incident caught my eye. Mr. Smith was actually present on the bus when the deaths occurred, but the article doesn't go into a lot of detail. He describes a sort of mania in the passengers, and says he was nearly thrown out of the bus - which was how all three people died, from the exposure - but it feels like he was leaving something out. Something important.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Anyway, the train's nearly to the stop, so the next time I'm recording, it'll be for Mrs. Clayton's statement. Honestly, I'm really excited to see what she has to say."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"There! We should be set up. Before we start, do you have any questions, Mrs. Clayton?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Just call me Ruth. And no. It's the same as when I gave my statement before, correct? Say what happened, and go from there."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's right. In that case…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Ruth Clayton, as a follow-up to statement 0092602. Original statement given live, August 5th, 2016. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London. Statement begins."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I should start with the lighthouse, I suppose. I did some more research into it, into what it was like before my parents bought it and moved in. Any deaths, or hauntings, or things like that. There weren't any, which wasn't really a surprise. It was just an old lighthouse, the same as it had always been. The records of my parents' purchase of the building were online too, which was a nice little confirmation that I hadn't imagined that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I went back, a few weeks after I gave my statement. Just a day trip. I left early in the morning, and told myself it was just to see if I'd left anything there when I moved out that I might want. It had been ten years since I moved to Gloucester, and if there wasn't something I wanted then, there wouldn't be anything suddenly urgent. But it gave me an excuse, I suppose.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I hadn't had any visions in those weeks, but as soon as I stepped foot in the lighthouse, another one hit me. And I mean that literally - I'd barely closed the door behind me before I started getting dizzy, and I nearly fell over.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"That time, unlike the previous ones, there was no sign of Lee. Just a young woman with her hair pulled back, wearing a leather jacket. She had a severe sort of look, all intense and focused. The two of us were sitting on opposite sides of a desk in an office. There wasn't anything on the walls, no indication of what sort of person she was. Though, I guess that would be an indication in and of itself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"She told me I had a new mission. A warehouse in Greece full of dangerous artifacts, including some sort of puzzle box. From the way she said it, that was the most dangerous one, even though at the time, I wasn't sure how. But I nodded and told her I accepted the mission.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"The vision faded out after that, and according to my watch it had been nearly half an hour. I took some painkillers, and started looking around the lighthouse as I turned over what I'd seen in my head. The warehouse was obviously the same as the one I'd seen catch fire, and the puzzle box must have been in one of the crates. I still had no idea how it was important, then.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I made a few rounds of each floor of the lighthouse, checking through my parents' old belongings for anything I might want to take home. It was mostly old clothing, or books, or the strange sort of knick knacks that people collect throughout their lives. Goodness knows I have plenty of my own.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"The view from the top of the lighthouse had always been wonderful, so once I finished looking through the inside, I went to sit up there. As I settled into the dusty leather seat, I felt my head swim again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"This time, I was in the warehouse again with Lee. We were running through the burning building. Not for the door, but because we were looking for something. A specific crate, near the back of the warehouse. Lee and I pried it open, and inside, packed along with a few framed photos, sat a metal box. There was a design filigreed into the metal, curling and winding like vines, with budding roses dotted along it every so often. Lee pulled a pair of heavy gloves out of his pocket, and reached in to grab the box, while I took a thick cloth bag out to hold it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"After he'd dropped what I knew to be the puzzle box into the bag, we started to run again - and this time, it </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>was</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> for the exit.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Soon enough, the vision faded again. I stayed up at the top of the lighthouse for a little longer, though, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Whether I should confront Lee or not, what I should say if I did, what answer I was even hoping to get.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"There wasn't a good answer, no matter what I did. Either he denied it and said he didn't know what I was talking about, and I would never be completely sure if he was telling the truth, or he admitted that what I'd been seeing was real and that we lived some secret double life for </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>years</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> and I somehow forgot. It was a lose-lose situation, really.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"But I couldn't just let the mystery of it eat away at me forever, either. I imagine you know what that feels like, don't you? The need to know, because ignorance is so much worse. It's written all over you, Archivist."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Thought so.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I decided to just ask Lee outright if he knew anything, and to go looking for the puzzle box from the vision if he said no. If I could find the box, then I would have proof that some of what I saw was real. And if, by some slim chance, Lee said yes, then… well, I'd have more proof than just a puzzle box.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"The drive back to Gloucester felt infinitely longer than the one to the lighthouse had. I convinced myself he would say no, because I was probably just imagining everything. After all, whenever I thought logically about it, the whole situation made no sense. Memories of a life as some shady, knock-off action hero making a living destroying mysterious crates of 'dangerous' items do sound ridiculous when you put it like that. But I also </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>knew</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> it was true, deep down. It </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>felt</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> true, watching it all unfold. And that back and forth of what I knew was true and what should have been true dragged on and on and on.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Lee was reading on the sofa, when I got home. I almost backed out then and there. He looked soft, like that - domestic, really. Like the man I remembered marrying, and not the cold, cruel version of him that I saw so often in the visions. It was so, so tempting to leave well enough alone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I sat down next to him, and Lee marked his place and set his book aside. He asked me how the trip to the lighthouse had been, if I'd found anything worth bringing back. I told him that no, I hadn't, but I did have a question for him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"And for just a flicker of a second, I saw fear in his eyes. That's what convinced me to go through with it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I asked him if we had a puzzle box in the house. Metal, with a rosebush design on it. Lee froze, went stiff, and asked me why I was asking.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I told him the truth, mostly. I'd had another vision, of him and I taking the puzzle box, and I just wanted to know if it had any basis in reality. He relaxed a little at that, and told me that we didn't. But his eyes darted to the drawer underneath the desk, the locked one that he claimed he'd lost the key to.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Lee's never been that great of a liar, when it comes to me. I can always tell when he lies. And that glance was the biggest tell of his. But I didn't push it. I smiled and told him that was reassuring, and I went to have a bit of a lie-down while I waited for my headache to fade. Later, I got up again and we had dinner together and talked about plans for a vacation over the summer. The whole time, though, there was this undercurrent. Lee was nervous, and trying to keep me from asking any more uncomfortable questions.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Not that I planned to. I knew where the box was, and I could figure out how to pick the lock on the drawer pretty easily. And, honestly, a trip to the Orkneys did sound nice if we could both get the time off.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"That night, Lee stayed up later than normal. Waiting to see if I'd try to get out of bed, probably. I didn't. It was the fear of having another vision while I slept that kept me awake, not any plan. I knew I'd have a chance during the week, when Lee left for work before I did.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"My fear was unfounded, though. If I dreamed that night, it wasn't of another memory.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I waited until Wednesday to try the drawer. Lee had gone in to work early, and I had all the time I needed to pick the lock and find the puzzle box. I had to use a tutorial online, but the lock on the drawer was old and flimsy enough that it wasn't hard to figure out. Soon enough, it was open, and I could see the puzzle box sitting inside.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"It looked just like it had in the vision. The silver metal shiny and smooth as it twisted around itself in thin vines, the rosebuds that looked on the verge of blooming. There was no lock, no obvious hinges, but I suppose that was the puzzle aspect. I've always been good at puzzles.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"There was a pattern, hidden in the rosebuds. Some of them depressed slightly when pushed at just the right angle. With a little work, I was able to figure out which ones to press to make some inner mechanism </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>click</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> right open.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I hesitated before opening it. Whatever lay inside, it could answer all my questions, or it could just raise more. There was every chance that it wouldn't answer any of them, to be honest. But I had to know if my whole life was a lie. I pulled the box open.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"There isn't a word for what it feels like to have another set of memories forced back into your mind. 'Agonizing' doesn't even begin to cover it. Imagine the way pain feels in your head, all that panic and fear and the coldness of adrenaline. Multiply that by the worst migraine you've ever had, and you might come close.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Then… well, then I remembered everything. The Division, why I joined and why I left, what the puzzle box even </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>was.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> That explanation is about three hours and twice as many nondisclosure agreements too long for now. And, honestly, the less your patron knows about what I do, the better. Suffice to say, it disapproves quite a bit.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"But I understand why I chose to forget all of that. Knowing what I know now, what lurks in the shadows and around every corner, it's impossible not to be terrified. I forgave Lee for lying to me almost immediately - after all, I'd asked him to, before opening the box.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"It was lucky, I suppose, that it had been empty when I opened it the first time. Otherwise, who knows whose memories I could have ended up with?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I called Lee, once I recovered. I explained what I'd done, and why. His first question was to ask if I wanted to go back to the Division, and I laughed. We'd built a life for ourselves in Gloucester, even if more than a little of it was a lie, and the last thing I wanted was to throw it all away. So, in the end, we decided to stay put and keep pretending things were normal. Mostly, at least. We did tear out the eyes from all of our photographs, and I kill every spider I see. Just to be safe.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"This is the end of my statement, by the way. Go ahead, ask a question or two. I can tell that you want to. No promises that I'll answer, though."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Why did you agree to give a follow-up? If you're pretending you're living a normal life, then why…?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I'd heard that the old Archivist died recently. Wanted to see what the new one was like."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Really."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Yes, really. And… it's a bit of a relief, getting all of that out. I'll say one thing for the Voyeur - it knows how to make someone want to talk."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"The Voyeur?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Huh. You really are new, aren't you? You'll learn soon enough. Either that, or you'll die."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Knowing more didn't help John."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Yeah, well, John was a fool. I did some risky things with the Division, but even I wasn't stupid enough to mess around with any servants of the Liar."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"The- do you mean Missy?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"If that's what it went by."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"What else can you tell me about her? About all of this?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Nothing. Like I said, your </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>friend</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> already doesn't like me. I'd rather not get more involved. If I could help you, I would, but you're already Marked. There's no coming back from that."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sharp exhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine. I'll be going, then."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Goodbye, Archivist."</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"The train back to London is even emptier than the one from it was. Which is nice, I suppose. It's good to have some peace and quiet after… all of that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was hoping for answers, once Ruth said she remembered. Answers about what's wrong with me, and what's behind all of this. Instead, all I've got is more questions. That's all I ever have, these days - questions I can't answer, because no one will so much as point me in the right direction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ruth said I had a </span>
  <em>
    <span>patron.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Which is the same way Saxon talked about Missy - a servant, a </span>
  <em>
    <span>tool</span>
  </em>
  <span> of whatever really controlled the mirrors. The Liar, if what Ruth said is true. Though the name doesn't seem to fit, really. From the statements I read, the hallways inside the mirrors were real, just confusing. Illogical. But not lies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"As for the Voyeur… that sounds an awful lot like what Mr. Hare described. Something watching relentlessly, eternally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I- I need to think about this. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Without</span>
  </em>
  <span> recording it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Abandonment issues, isolation</p><p>Koschei finally gives his statement!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"So, how do I do this? We got a little sidetracked last time."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Just sit down over there, and- actually, first, did you fill out the paperwork this time?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I did, yeah. It's not like you can't just text me if you need more information, though."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, it still can't hurt. Just in case I'm not here. Right, so, you can just sit down. I've got a little speech I have to do before you start, but then all you need to do is talk about what happened."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sounds easy enough."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It should be. Right, here goes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Koschei Oakdown, regarding…"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"My childhood, I suppose."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Regarding his childhood. Original statement given live, August 8th, 2016. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm not… entirely sure when it started. Maybe it was always there, lurking on the edges of my vision. I didn't notice until after you left, though. That's what makes me wonder when it started - whether you had helped keep it at bay, or whether it struck when I was vulnerable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Not that it matters much either way. The end result is the same, regardless of how I got there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It took six months after you left for me to notice. I was at school, sitting in the back of the classroom, away from everyone else. There was a lesson, but I wasn't paying it much attention. Instead, I was looking at the fog that had crept into the classroom. It seeped in, underneath the door, and seemed to be trying to cover the whole floor. But, for the most part, it was gathering around me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It swirled up, around the legs of my chair, and wound through my fingers. Even though it was just cold, damp air, it felt like it had some hidden motivation. Some purpose behind its movements as it grew more dense, surrounding me. I breathed it in as it grew higher, more compacted, and it tasted like snowfall on a late winter night. The sort of frigid chill that makes you wonder how humanity ever survived without interior heating.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Slowly, I felt the rest of the classroom fade away into the fog. The rest of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>people,</span>
  </em>
  <span> really, since the walls and the desks kept their form. Everyone went fuzzy at the edges first, and then became grey and featureless, until they just looked like humanoid swirls of color. Like they weren't real. I stood up and tried to touch one of them, to see if they would even notice. My hand went right through. They were only more fog and air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This is probably the part where I should say how </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone</span>
  </em>
  <span> I felt like that. And I did, in a way. But it was a loneliness I'd grown accustomed to, over the months. Turns out that growing up with someone for ten years, utterly inseparable, and then losing them in the space of a single day helps with that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You know, I never resented you. I knew it wasn't your fault, and that you wouldn't have left me if you'd had a choice. But I'd still lost my best friend, and compared to that constant </span>
  <em>
    <span>ache,</span>
  </em>
  <span> the realization that everyone else was just as far away from my reach as you were barely felt like anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Eventually, I stood and wandered for a little while through the washed-out shadow of a world that I'd been left with. Occasionally, I would see glimpses of people at a distance. Whenever I walked closer, though, they simply faded into the swirling clouds of white.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It would almost have been soothing, under different circumstances; all that peace and quiet. But mostly, it just made me sick. The loneliness may have been something I was familiar with, by then, but it wasn't comforting. I hated it. I hated not having you there with me. It felt like the entirety of that place was mocking me for that - telling me </span>
  <em>
    <span>look, see, this is what you feel like inside. Isn't it awful? Don't you wish you had someone here with you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"And it was cold, too. Not in a temperature sort of way - though it was that, too - but in a way that felt like a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lack</span>
  </em>
  <span> of something. A lack of warmth, a lack of human contact. It felt exactly like falling asleep alone did, those first… well. Years. It took me a while to get truly used to sleeping without another person.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Time was strange in that place. It wasn't quite real there; a few steps to the left, perhaps. I didn't have a watch on, but occasionally I could see one of the clocks on the walls of a corridor, and I knew that the time they read didn't match up with how long it had been for me. So, when I say that it was hours before I wandered my way back into the real world, I mean that it had been about two days there, and maybe six hours for me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The police officer that found me standing on the side of the road told me that running away wasn't the answer, no matter what. I pretended to listen and nodded like I cared, and let him take me back to the foster home. They thought I'd tried to run away as well. I didn't bother to correct them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They wouldn't have believed me, anyway. I was apparently a bit of a flight risk even before that, thanks to you. I think they were worried that I was going to try to run off and find you. The thought did cross my mind once or twice, but in the end, I figured that chances of finding you were so slim as to be pointless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That only made the fog worse. It always got stronger whenever I felt alone, and nothing did that more than thinking about trying to find you and </span>
  <em>
    <span>failing.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The thought of running away, searching for you, and narrowly missing you when you did finally come back occurred disturbingly often in my nightmares, believe me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There was only one other particularly bad time, though. It was on the day of your thirteenth birthday, and I'd been handed off to a new set of foster parents a few weeks before that. I got caught up in thinking about how you were already a teenager without me, and how I was probably never going to get to celebrate another birthday with you again - funny, what seems so urgent when you're a kid - and by the time I realized, it was too late. The fog had already swallowed me up, and I was alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Like before, I wandered around until it faded again. At that point, I hadn't figured out how to get out again somewhat reliably, so I was stuck there for at least a week before I managed to slip out. I never once got hungry or thirsty, though I did get </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> bored. That place wasn't trying to kill me, I knew that much by the end of the trip. I ended up back at Prydonia because of it, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It kept happening after that, on and off. Whenever I let myself slip too far away from the real world - from real </span>
  <em>
    <span>people.</span>
  </em>
  <span> But I got better about it, in the end. Better at grounding myself, and remembering that I had… connections. Ties back to reality.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But you know the funny thing? Every time I did find myself back in that place, the thing that would draw me back out the quickest was memories of you. I would remember that one awful snowstorm, back when we were about eight, and you'd snuck in after curfew with your pillow and blanket because you were too cold to sleep by yourself. We layered our blankets on top of each other for better warmth and squished into the middle of the bed as closely as we could so that we'd be as warm as possible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm pretty sure that was one of the few times we got caught. But, regardless, it was a good memory. I could draw it up around me, just like we had with our blankets, and the fog would retreat just enough that I could pull my way out of it again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ever since we found each other, it hasn't happened again. Part of me thinks that's only because it happens rarely these days to start with, but I like to think that being near you again helps."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Soft laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Stars,</span>
  </em>
  <span> that sounds sappy when I put it like that. But it's the truth. And the end of my statement, I guess. There's not much more to say, really. I spent most of my adolescence wandering around a fog realm of loneliness and only avoided getting lost there forever because of you. Honestly, I could've just summed it up in that one sentence and been done with it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I- No, I think it was good you said all of that. But why didn't you say anything earlier, Kos?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, I was </span>
  <em>
    <span>going</span>
  </em>
  <span> to, but then I realized who you were and…"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"And we got sidetracked, I know. You still could've said something to me, though. It didn't have to be a statement."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was easier like this, though. I think if I'd tried telling you normally, I'd have been more nervous."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It knows how to make someone want to talk."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nothing. Just… something I heard, recently."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you feeling okay, Theta?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm fine. This place does things to your head, sometimes. It's nothing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe you should take off early today. We could get dinner together, if you want."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've got a lot of filing to do, but I'd love to."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you want a hand? I know you've got three assistants already, but I don't have much planned for the rest of the day. If not, I understand completely, but-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No! No, that sounds wonderful. Brilliant, even! We can use all the hands we can get, honestly, with the backlog. I'll let the others know, just so they don't get surprised or anything. Oh, and keep an eye out for the worms. I'm talking to Kingsfield about getting them dealt with, but for now the best way of handling them is to squish them."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"He really hasn't approved getting pest control in yet?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Keeps arguing about the condition of the statements. Like having them </span>
  <em>
    <span>eaten</span>
  </em>
  <span> by worms won't be worse than a few chemicals. But like I said, I'm talking to him about it."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A door opening.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh! Ryan, good, I was just about to tell you that Koschei- Why've you got a worm on your shoe?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They're </span>
  <em>
    <span>everywhere.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Graham was in the archives proper and said it looked like a wave of them. They moved the filing cabinet I put over the trap door and they're coming out of the tunnels. We need to go, </span>
  <em>
    <span>now."</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Worms, worm wounds, knives<br/>I present a <i>very</i> long chapter of Worms! Since this one took longer than I planned, I'll be taking tomorrow off from posting to try to catch up in the schedule. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled terror by Wednesday, though!</p><p>Also, due to having four/five people in the same room at some points, this chapter has quick little first initial signifiers before the dialogue in group scenes. Let me know whether you like them or not - I'm not sure if I want to keep them throughout the rest of the series.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>T "Graham, close the door."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "But shouldn't we be trying to reach the stairs?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "If you can think of a way to get there </span>
  <em>
    <span>without</span>
  </em>
  <span> getting attacked, I am all ears. But my office is the safest place right now, so </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span> close the door before that changes."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "...Right."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A door closing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Okay, quick headcount. Yaz, Graham, Ryan, Koschei, me. That's all of us, right? Not forgetting anyone?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Don't think so."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Good. Now, Yaz, you were the last one in. How bad was it out there?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shuddering exhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Pretty bad. They were covering the entire floor, and spreading. The door out is shut, but… I don't know how much good that'll do."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Right, okay, that's not good. We need to get ourselves and everyone else out of the building, and we need to find a way to kill the worms."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "There's too many to just stomp on them like we have been. And I </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> don't want to know what happens if they… get you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I know, Ryan. We need a plan. What've we got to work with? Does anyone except me and Koschei have their mobiles?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Mine's still at my desk."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Mine too."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "I've got mine, but you know I don't get a good signal down here."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Alright, so that's three mobiles counting Yaz's, one recorder, one knife, and one very small fire extinguisher. Anything else?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "I've got a lighter in my pocket."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Make that three mobiles, one recorder, one knife, one fire extinguisher, and Koschei's lighter. Maybe we can work with that."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "And do what, boss?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Not sure yet, Graham. Getting there. So far I've got about one-eighth of a plan, and it mostly involves calling the authorities on one phone and Kira at the front desk on the other. Got some tentative bits about the fire extinguisher and/or the lighter, since I doubt the worms are going to like either of them."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "We could try to stop them at the source, too. They're coming from the archives, right? Or statement storage, or whatever it's called. So if we can shut that off, at least there won't be </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span> worms than there already are."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "And it's closer than the doors out - Koschei, that is a </span>
  <em>
    <span>brilliant</span>
  </em>
  <span> idea. I'll handle that, and you four stay here. I'll take my mobile and knife and the fire extinguisher, and once I've got the doors shut, I'll call you."</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>mad?</span>
  </em>
  <span> There is no way you're going out there by yourself!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "The more of us go, the more risk there is of someone getting attacked, Yaz. If it's just me, I'm the only one who'll get hurt."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "You're still recovering from the last stupid, risky thing that you did!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "What, you mean </span>
  <em>
    <span>saving your life?</span>
  </em>
  <span> I'd do that again in a heartbeat. In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing now. Now stay here, do not follow me until I call you, and try to contact anyone who might help."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Theta-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Door opening, then closing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Soft, slimy sounds.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, Yaz </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> wasn't joking. These things are ankle-deep now across the whole floor. Thank goodness for boots, I suppose. I just need to be careful not to stand still, and that </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> be enough to keep them off me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Eugh. Everywhere I step, I crush some of them. It's disgusting. It feels like stepping on plastic, but then they </span>
  <em>
    <span>crack</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>ooze</span>
  </em>
  <span> under pressure. Luckily, they don't seem to be doing much more than-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yelp.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Louder, slimier sounds.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"And they can jump! About five feet straight up, apparently. I just barely missed getting one to the face. I really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> need to close the archives and get out of here."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>R "Where did you even find that recorder?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "It was in Theta's desk drawer. I figured… well, in case something happens, we'll have a record of it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Why were you in her desk drawer in the first place?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "You're Ryan, right?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Yeah."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Theta's told me about you. About all of you. I don't know how much they've told you, but the two of us, we go way back. I would trust them with anything. Like to think they'd do the same. So, I was only looking to see if they had anything useful in there, and given the circumstances, I doubt they'd mind."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A disgruntled, if acquiescent, hum.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>G "To be honest, son, she hasn't said much about her childhood at all. A few things here and there, but none of it was before you showed up."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Really?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "I think it's a bit of a sore subject for her."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Huh. I thought… Yaz, any luck with the Department of Health?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "I'm still on hold. And I texted Kira, but I don't know if she has her mobile on it during work, so I'm not sure how much help that'll be."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "It's better than nothing, though."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Yeah, well, going after Theta would be even better. I'm worried that they're going to get hurt. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Again."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>K "You know, they never told me what happened to them the first time. They said they got mauled, but… didn't elaborate."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "It's complicated."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Well, we don't have anything better to do."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Guess you have a point. So, what </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> they tell you about the old Head Archivist?"</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I've made it to the archives doors, still wormless. Somehow. A lot of them made some pretty spirited attempts, let me tell you. The fire extinguisher did a good job of scaring them off, though, at least for a little while. I guess they don't like the temperature change. Or the carbon dioxide. After this, I'm going to be stocking up on fire extinguishers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Like Ryan said, the doors are a little broken. The worms actually managed to splinter the wood a bit. Which makes sense, I suppose. There's enough of them to cover the floor a few times over, so that translates to quite a bit of worm-force behind the door. Like a dam during a flood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Since most of them are in the office area instead of out here, I should be able to move one of the heavier shelves in front of the door, and that'll keep them shut. Long enough for everyone to evacuate, at least. I'll still have to be quick about it, though. I'm pacing back and forth right now as it is, because any time I stop, the worms congregate and start trying to crawl up my shoes. This way, I only have to worry about the jumping ones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wonder why they were in the tunnels in the first place, though. Why they chose to come here. It's not- there isn't anything in the archives except us and the statements. But then, there could be all kinds of things in the tunnels. Nobody's really explored down there, unless you count… well. </span>
  <em>
    <span>That."</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Y "I was so convinced I was going to die. He'd shoved me against the wall and was snarling in my face and his claws were in my shoulders and the </span>
  <em>
    <span>teeth</span>
  </em>
  <span> and I just-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Inhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Slower exhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Then Theta came running in, yelling at him to leave me alone, and he turned and leapt at them instead. They got tackled to the ground, but they had something sharp in their hand - I think it was from where he'd been keeping them - and managed to stab him."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "They killed him."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Well. That certainly explains a lot."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "What's </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> supposed to mean?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "I've been worried about them, too. Whenever I asked them how they got hurt, they would change the subject. At first, I thought it was just because it wasn't a pleasant story, but…"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Ugh. I'm </span>
  <em>
    <span>still</span>
  </em>
  <span> on hold. Maybe one of us should look out and see if Theta's alright."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Or,</span>
  </em>
  <span> we could stay here, where it's not actively infested with worms. Just an idea."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "But what if-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Is there any scrap paper in here? Or… anything that's not important?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "What? Why?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Well, I'm planning to set it on fire."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Overlapping sounds of confusion.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>K "What Yaz said, about how Saxon got everyone out of the building by pulling the fire alarm, it gave me an idea. If we can set off the fire alarms, everyone upstairs will evacuate, right? And it'll get the fire brigade called in."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "That might work!"</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Heavy breathing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"So, funny thing about moving the shelves. My shoulders're still healing, which makes me a lot slower about it. My fire extinguisher ran out halfway through, and the worms are </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> opportunistic. There are, at the time I'm recording this, a total of five worms in my legs."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Squelching sounds, followed by a pained hiss.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Make that four. I managed to get to the room in the archives where we put the more delicate statements, which has a proper seal on the door, so at least once I get the other three out, I should be safe. The archives are still open, though, and I can't exactly close them from </span>
  <em>
    <span>inside</span>
  </em>
  <span> without locking myself in with them. I tried calling Koschei's mobile, but I can't get a signal in here."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>More squelching, and a low groan.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"These ones are in deep. That's probably the worst thing about these worms - they </span>
  <em>
    <span>burrow.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Fast. And knives aren't great for extracting them. Maybe a corkscrew or something would work better, but I don't exactly keep wine bottles in the archives."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Squelch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Two left. I… don't know how well I'll be able to walk, after this. They've gone deep enough to hit muscle, I know that much, and the gashes I have to make to get them out aren't helping."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bitter laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Squelch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Guess I can thank dear old </span>
  <em>
    <span>mother</span>
  </em>
  <span> for one thing. I'm not squeamish about a little self-inflicted surgery."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Squelch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"And that's the last of them. Think I'll just stay here for a bit. Try to make a plan. Maybe pass out a little bit."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A long, piercing beep.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Groan.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Is that the- the fire alarm. Someone pulled the fire alarm."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Inhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No panicking, Theta. Saxon is dead. So it can't have been him, which means someone else set it off. Which is </span>
  <em>
    <span>good,</span>
  </em>
  <span> because it's getting everyone else out. And this is a locked room, so even </span>
  <em>
    <span>if</span>
  </em>
  <span> there is something out there besides the worms, it can't get in."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A soft click, followed by a hiss.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's the fire suppression system. Why is </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> turning on? It only does that if there's an actual- </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh."</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>R "Is this carbon dioxide?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Think so. They changed the system last year, remember? All that construction for </span>
  <em>
    <span>weeks."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Please tell me I'm not the only one hearing screaming from out there."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>K "I… think that might be the worms."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>K "Sorry. That wasn't helpful."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "You could say that, yeah."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "...Should we open the door? Just to check."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "I say yes - it's probably not good to be breathing in carbon dioxide like this, either."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Slow creak of hinges.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Distant slimy noises, overlapping with ear-grating screams.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Guess you were right, Koschei."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I keep hearing something right outside the door, but I </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> don't want to try opening it just yet. As much as I'd like to think that the worms aren't smart enough to set up an ambush, they're clearly smart enough to plan this. Once my legs feel a bit less like they're about to give out if I try standing, maybe."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I just wish… I wish Koschei hadn't been dragged into this. He doesn't deserve it. He's- he's supposed to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>normal.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Safe. Not part of all this supernatural nonsense. And this is all my fault, too. If I'd taken his statement when he first came in, he wouldn't be here, or if I'd brought the worms up to Rassilon sooner, he'd at least be safer. But </span>
  <em>
    <span>no,</span>
  </em>
  <span> I had to be an </span>
  <em>
    <span>idiot</span>
  </em>
  <span> and get distracted and now everyone I care about is in danger because of me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Story of my life, I suppose. Failing to protect the people I care about, over and over. I should've pretended not to know Koschei when he came in - </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> would've kept him out of this. Not that I really could. I'm too selfish for that, too </span>
  <em>
    <span>attached.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Just because I never stopped l- caring for him, doesn't mean I should have dragged him into danger like this."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I should tell him. I've been avoiding it ever since we had dinner, but he deserves to know. Before… before anything else. Not like there'll </span>
  <em>
    <span>be</span>
  </em>
  <span> an 'anything else' after this. He'll leave, and I'll deserve it, 'cause I left him first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The universe works in funny ways, I suppose. It drags us apart for </span>
  <em>
    <span>years,</span>
  </em>
  <span> then brings us together again just long enough for me to hurt him more than I already have. He doesn't deserve any of it. He's </span>
  <em>
    <span>brilliant,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and I'm a murderer and an idiot and all I do is hurt people. Koschei, and Grace, and-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Distant voices.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Theta? Where are you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What is Yaz </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"The worms are gone!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, I really hope she's telling the truth. I'm in the archives!"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Can you unlock the door?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Give me a sec! My legs aren't doing great."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Groan.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shuffling footsteps.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hi guys. I got a little eaten. Think I'm okay now, though."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Mentions of removing eyes, mentions of cults, mentions of the apocalypse</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"You know, the nice thing about video meetings is that you can do them without having to get out of bed. Very handy when you're recovering from worm attacks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Technically,</span>
  </em>
  <span> I can walk, but I'm not supposed to go back to work for another week yet. And even then, I'm still going to need a cane for a while. They got in deep enough to do some serious damage to my lower legs, which means I also have to go to physical therapy until I'm back to normal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Idris, at least, has been loving this. She hasn't stopped laying on my stomach since I got home, pretty much. She's about to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> upset at me when I kick her off so I can look somewhat dignified when I talk to Nardole in… three minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I made Yaz send me the whole list of questions I had for him. Everything from what happened to Clara and Bill, to what John was like before he died. What he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> like, that is, because the man Saxon described and the one I knew were two very different people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Apparently, it was John's insistence that got the fire suppression system switched over to carbon dioxide. He's the one who had the door in the secure room sealed properly, too. Like he knew what was coming, perhaps. Or maybe he was just being prepared in case of an emergency. With this sort of thing, there's really not much of a difference. And it still saved lives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm grateful for that much, at least. My friends are alive and in one piece, and Koschei- Well. He's the one who helped me get home from the hospital, and he calls every morning, and he just dropped off some soup for me yesterday, so I don't </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span> he hates me. We haven't really talked about it yet. About what happened in the archives, or… other things. But we're going to have to, eventually."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Alright, Idris, you've got to get up."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Annoyed mrow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know, but I need to talk to Nardole."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Louder, more annoyed meow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm sorry, dear, but you've got to move."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Distinctly petulant mrrr.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thank you. Sorry."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shuffling noises.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"There! Hi! Nardole?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah. And you're Mx. Lungbarrow?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yup. New Head Archivist, as of March. I would make a comment about the office, but right now I'm bed-bound thanks to an incident of worms."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sympathetic wincing sound.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll live. Anyways, I've got a few questions for you. About John, and Clara, and Bill. And… some other things, if we have time."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll try to answer them, but I'm warning you now - I'm not giving any sort of statement."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Why not?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Because, quite frankly, I'm only doing this because you don't deserve to be wandering around blind. But I'm also not going to help you get worse."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Worse </span>
  <em>
    <span>how?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Worse like John was worse, when I decided to move here. The statements change you, once you read enough of them, and not for the better."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do the live ones make that faster? I found a few of John's old recordings, and he mentioned in one that he wasn't going to take a live statement, even though he could have."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They're stronger, yes. More direct than reading a statement. John tried to avoid them once he figured that out, but by that point, it was too late."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Too late for what?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well… </span>
  <em>
    <span>him.</span>
  </em>
  <span> You've had the job since March, yeah?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"March second."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It might not be too late for you, then. I'm sure you've figured out you can't quit normally, yeah?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've tried."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But there is a way. It's just a little gruesome."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I had worms eat holes in my legs and had to dig them out with a pocket knife less than a week ago."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Worse than that."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"... Ah."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It involves cutting out your own eyes."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Ah."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"There's a reason I just switched buildings instead of trying to quit properly."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, how did Clara do it? From that statement you sent me, she seemed fine."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Nervous laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wouldn't go that far. Clara was a special case. She got too involved in the Circus, and I think they took the liberty of helping her quit."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've heard that before - the Circus. It didn't sound like anything good. Clara was investigating it, wasn't she? And there something about a hybrid."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Like I said, she was a special case. Even I don't really know much about what she was doing with the Circus. John was very secretive about it. But I know the Circus itself was preparing for the Unknowing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And what's that?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"A sort of ritual. It's meant to bring about the end of the world. And it's not the only one."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you need a minute?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, no, I just- Sorry. Wasn't expecting that."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you sure? It took Bill a while to come to terms with it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm fine, really. Thanks. Keep going."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There's thirteen of them, in theory. Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>technically</span>
  </em>
  <span> fourteen, but the last one's never actually happened. They tend to happen in cycles, repeating every few hundred years."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"John was trying to stop them. That's why he- why the archives were in such bad condition."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Exactly. The last one he managed to stop was the Separation, but… Bill didn't make it. She was killed by one of the people attempting the ritual."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"What about the rest?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Really, it's okay if you need to take a break to-"</span>
</p><p>
  <b>"What. About. The. Rest?"</b>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"There's at least four more due to happen within the next few years, but I only know details about one of them. And there's no need to get all compulsion-y on me, you know."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I… sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't even- I've never even </span>
  <em>
    <span>done</span>
  </em>
  <span> that before."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Have you noticed your memory getting weird, or anything with your vision?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah. Let me guess, so did John, and it's not good."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah. You might want to give up your hopes of quitting."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wasn't planning to, anyway. I can't just </span>
  <em>
    <span>leave.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Especially not now that I know the fate of the world is on the line."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And that's the second reason I didn't quit properly. I'm doing what I can over here, but I know one of them is going to happen over in the UK."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What can you tell me?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's called the Scoured Earth, and the group attempting it calls themselves the Church of the Lightless Flame. They've kept the details under wraps, but-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, I know who they are. And I think I know </span>
  <em>
    <span>where</span>
  </em>
  <span> they are, too. When is it supposed to happen?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Soon. Very soon."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, why am I not surprised?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"If you're going to get involved, be careful. John had decades of experience, and he still lost people."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't exactly have another choice, do I?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No. No, you don't. I'd wish you luck, but…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I understand. Thanks, Nardole."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"This is just like when I talked to Ruth. I got some questions answered, but I've only got more, now. At least I have a goal - stopping the Church and the Scoured Earth. With an unknown amount of time, no idea what the ritual actually entails, and even less of an idea of how to stop it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And,</span>
  </em>
  <span> if I get it wrong, the world might burn. No pressure or anything."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Louder, longer sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I need some tea."</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>There's some Feelings Discussion that's between this and the next chapter - check out chapter 2 of 'The Dying Embers of an Altar-Place' to read it!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Cults (specifically an apocalyptic one), religious themes, discussion of loss and trauma (and arson)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"I would just like to say, for whoever is listening to these in the future, that getting eaten by worms is worse than getting mauled by a werewolf. You know, on the off chance that I manage to stop the apocalyptic rituals now looming on the horizon and someone else gets this job. At least last time I didn't need physical therapy. Though from the state my shoulders are still in, over two months later, maybe I should have had some anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Anyway. Back at work, no more worms in the archives - courtesy of the Department of Health, as apparently they were a biohazard - and no time to waste. While I was bedridden, Ryan was able to find another statement on the Church that looked promising, so that's first on the list.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm almost looking forward to it. Going two weeks without reading a statement felt… weird. A break in routine, I suppose. Though maybe it's something worse. Something more sinister."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Deprecating laugh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Knowing this place, it's the latter, but I don't have any other choice. I need to know more to stop the Church, and that means reading more statements, even if they've got… unintended side effects. Whatever form those take."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Beep bip beep, beep beep beep, bip bip bip-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hey Koschei! Aren't you at work?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, I'm doing fine. I'm going to read a statement soon, though."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know, but… this is important. It'll just be the one this week, until I feel better."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Long pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, yeah, I'm sure Idris would love to see you again. And me, obviously."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>"I think I'll leave early today, so six should be fine."</p><p>
  <em>Shorter pause.</em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll see you then. L- bye!"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Distinctly happy sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right. Statement of Rachel Olstead, regarding the end times. Original statement given June 20th, 2014. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London. Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The burning is coming. Soon, so soon I can taste the ash upon my tongue. It will not be a glorious end, for nothing so </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>rotten</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> as this world can end in glory, but the destruction that shall end it… oh, yes. </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>That</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> will be glorious indeed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The preacher speaks of how it shall be. A great and terrible ruin upon one such that is chosen, a burning of all they hold dear. Not death, for they must know and feel the pain deeply. Death would be too generous an escape to allow them. It is their pain, after all, that shall be fuel for the great fire.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have prepared for this. My own spark is bright and ready, and when the time comes, I shall make use of it to aid in turning the lamb's life to one of ashes. Though I have only brought an end to one life, myself, I have watched the others in their work. They are artful in their desolation, beautiful in the absences they leave in a sinner's life. It is such an exquisite form of agony that they inflict, such a careful removal of that which matters most.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Those whose art is perfected have become pure. Their skin is no longer pathetic human flesh, but the wax of a great candle, burning and melting as it counts the time down to the fiery dawn that will cleanse the Earth in flames. Their eyes no longer blink, no longer ache in the heat of the sacrificial fires we light. They have grown strong and yet pliant for our Flame - unharmed by those lesser, but weak against that greatness which they love. And is that not the way of all things? Do we not bend for that to which we dedicate ourselves?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Alas, I have not been fortunate enough to be one of such elites. I am merely to witness those blessed, and aid them with their work. So, too, are they aids for the one who will truly ignite the Flame, when it comes. Each of us is a flame unto ourselves, a fragmented spark of the greatest Flame, and we each help to light those greater than us.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And so, when the time comes and the lamb is prepared for sacrifice, it shall be those of the candle who shall make good upon the promises we have made to our Flame. Suffering in exchange for power, utter destruction that shall wipe the slate of the world clean so that new and pure life may grow. This is what the sinful lamb shall be used for.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the fuel has been gathered, when every last drop of anguish has been wrung from the lamb, we will embark upon the second leg of our journey. There, we will ourselves add to the pyre. Physical possessions are nothing in the heat of the flames, but a painful sacrifice is a more potent one. We will give of all we love that is not the Flame, for it shall all burn in the end either way. At least in giving of it willingly, it becomes part of the first spark, the first flicker of the flame that shall eat up this wretched earth.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Each time that we gather, we practice this in microcosm; a small sacrifice to the altar-flame that cleanses us of our attachments and brings mere drops of fuel to the Flame. Each of us has a role to play, and this is ours. Our loss shall be the world's gain, when it allows the great engulfing destruction to reign. We shall be like twigs added to a fire, the first fuel to catch before the heaviness of the lamb's sacrifice can be ignited.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Only once there is sufficient fuel shall the Flame be lit. Not by I, nor by the preacher, nor by those of candle-wax skin and burning touch, but by the one who has been chosen. He was not born into the Flame, but his dedication is unparalleled. He will be the spark that ignites the Flame and brings this existence to an end.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There are three phases to this cleansing, just as there are three levels of those who believe. The impure, of which I belong to, who shall be the first lit once the lamb is drained. The pure, who shall drain the lamb and then become themselves fuel, when it is their time. The chosen is above both of those, however.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was prophesied in the Righteous Burning that one would come from the cold and the lost, one with a heart already broken. One fit, more than any other, to take the mantle and ignite the Flame at the end of the world. He would not become like those of wax, for his humanity would be what brought him such pain that he would ascend beyond even they. His touch would burn with the Flame's heat, and he would use it well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was fortunate enough to see him, the first time that he entered our hallowed ground. He was still young, then, and unsure of himself, but his pain burned like a torch. The words of the Righteous Burning spoke to him, just as they had to me, and he spoke with the preacher after the service.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It wasn't long before he was revealed as the chosen. His supplications were different than ours; he had such grief and anger that he was already split through - a perfect vessel for the Flame, hollowed out and smoldering. He and the priest often spoke, discussing plans for the future. For the desolation that shall soon come.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His first destruction was of the school where my husband once worked, not long after we brought a… friend to a service. He was frightened of our devotion, but we knew that he would be a good fit for the Church, whether in life or death. After all, the chosen spoke to him. But the destruction of the school was unprecedented. My husband and I didn't know it was due to occur until we felt the Flame brighten within us as the building burned to nothing. We rejoiced, of course, but we were shocked all the same.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Since, he has progressed further along his path toward becoming what will be needed to light the Flame. The time is approaching ever faster, and I eagerly await it. This world will be cauterized of its wounds, this rotten earth sterilized so that only the pure will grow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It will be the end, and the beginning, and a genesis. It will be.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well. That was distinctly unsettling. But… now I have some idea of what the start of the ritual will look like, at least. A sacrificial lamb, tortured until it can't be any further. I don't even know what to look for. Kidnappings, perhaps? Arson?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe that was what Quincy Burroughs was meant to be, but it failed. Or I'm just seeing connections that aren't there. Either way, I've got to keep an eye out for anything like that. And I think I'll have Yaz go looking for the Church itself, see if she can find the actual location. I know the rough area, but if it comes down to it, I'd much rather </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> be trying to figure out exactly where it is the day of the ritual.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know I promised Koschei I wouldn't read another statement this week, but I might start looking for the next one to read. Maybe we have one about those people of wax that were mentioned. At first, I thought it was just a weird metaphor, but I'm pretty sure Mrs. Olstead was being very, very literal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Actually, that name rings a bell. Rachel Olstead… As in Derrick Olstead, as in Sebastian Brown's statement. Which makes sense, given the details. I suppose Derrick wasn't the one responsible for the school arson after all."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Now, why would a cult like this that's all about destruction bother having a </span>
  <em>
    <span>chosen one?</span>
  </em>
  <span> It doesn't make much sense. If everything's going to burn, why would someone special need to start it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Unless nobody else </span>
  <em>
    <span>could.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Maybe their chosen person has a patron of his own, like Missy and Saxon and… Anyway, that's another person to look for. I'm guessing that this ritual won't be able to start without him, so if I could find him and stop him somehow, that ought to put a wrench in things."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Reading this was definitely worth it, but between that and the walk here, I'm worn out. Think I might take a nap before I get back to sorting files and looking for anything useful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Darkness, a little claustrophobia</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Like I promised Koschei, I took a break for a week before reading more statements. I think I'll be going back to twice a week from now on, though. If there's even a chance that one might have something helpful, it's worth the risk. My life doesn't matter half as much as saving the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Speaking of, Yaz was able to find the building - or at least one </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> similar to what Solomon Brown described - where the Church worships. She even got a few photos of the outside of the chapel, as well as the fireplace. They seem to match Mr. Brown's account. I told her not to go snooping around yet, and I think she actually listened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So far, I've had no luck finding more statements about the Church - much less any people made from wax. I've had Ryan looking for them all week, but if we do have anything along those lines, it's well-hidden. But he was able to find another statement about the Midnight Corporation. It may not be world-ending, but it's still interesting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Jenny Nelle, regarding an experiment that she participated in. Original statement given August 5th, 2014. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I guess, really, this is my fault. I signed up for the study, after all. I go to Linfield University up in Oregon, and it's a private school, so tuition isn't exactly cheap. Sure, I've got scholarships and everything, but they don't always cover all the costs. I've never liked the thought of customer service, either. I was looking around for a job opportunity for over the summer, just to build up a bit of cash, when I saw an ad for a study run by the Midnight Corporation. All it said was to call for more information, which was kind of skeevy, but it payed nearly two grand for a week and a half, so… I called.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Honestly, I was expecting to get scammed, but the lady who answered the phone seemed professional. I told her that I was calling to apply for the study, and that got me put on hold for five minutes while I got transferred to another line. The next guy I talked to asked me a few preliminary questions - did I have a car, did I get seasick, did I have anything that would prevent me from going down to California for a total of two weeks. My answers were yes, no, and no, respectively. So he told me that there was a position on a cruise ship that was part of a study in human dark vision, and that he would email me the paperwork to fill out.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It seemed like a really good gig. A day's drive down to California, a week and a half on a cruise ship - even if I wouldn't be 'part' of the cruise - and then another day in CA before driving back home, all for 1,800$, was a steal. I filled out the paperwork, sent it back, and waited for a response. There were a few weird questions on it, like asking about my worst childhood fear, but I figured that might just be to weed out anyone unsuited to the study.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two days later, I got an email telling me I'd been chosen, and what day the cruise started on. I put it on my calendar and forgot about it until about a week out, when I started packing for the trip. I was hoping that I would get to spend at least a little time enjoying the cruise itself, so I mostly packed warm-weather clothing. Shorts, tank tops, all that. A bathing suit. I even did a little research on the cruise beforehand, and apparently there was a scuba diving thing, so I packed a second bathing suit. Not that I was really thinking I would get a chance to go, but on the off chance that I did, I wanted to be prepared.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two days before the cruise, I shoved everything in my little green Jeep and headed down to California. I found a hotel to stay in before the cruise, and spent the evening wandering around the city. I had some </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>wonderful</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> pizza from this little shop, Hawaiian with extra pineapple. I know, I know, but I like it. The next day, I found the place the cruise was due to leave from and got familiar with the route there and back, so that I wouldn't be rushing around the next morning trying to get there on time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I was down by the dock, I saw a man in a black suit talking with someone in gray. The man in gray said something about an abyss, and how it was imperative that it didn't interfere with "other plans". The man in black said it wouldn't, and that he'd made certain of that. Then he turned and walked up onto the cruise ship. The man in gray turned around, and he looked directly at me. I tried to act normal and kept walking, but I think he knew I was eavesdropping on his conversation.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I ended up staying in my hotel room watching crappy reality TV shows for the rest of the day. Somehow, it just felt safer than walking around the city did, especially after the way the man looked at me. It was like he'd been considering how hard it would be to hide my body when he killed me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At 7 the next morning, I was up, dressed, and ready to head to the cruise ship. I checked out of the hotel, grabbed some breakfast, and was at the ship by 8:30. At the check-in, I showed them my waiver I'd signed for the study, and one of the staff took me to my room. It was a nice place. Absolutely </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>massive,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> too. I had to take an elevator to get down to the level my room was on. As we stood in the elevator, I asked the girl leading me if she knew when the other participants in the study would be arriving. So that we could meet up and chat, if that was allowed. All she said was that they would arrive throughout the day, and that chances of any of us interacting were slim, so as to not sway the results of the study. That made sense, I suppose, though I'm working towards a degree in art history for a reason - science has never been my thing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My room was smaller than I'd hoped it would be. There was a bed, a dresser, and a bathroom, but that was it. No TV, no window out so that I could see the ocean. But I was fine - I'd brought stuff to do, and I was honestly just looking forward to the easy money. I unpacked everything and spent a few hours scrolling through my phone before I started to get a little hungry. As soon as I stood up and walked towards the door, everything went dark. The lamp by my bed, the light in the bathroom, the bulb on the ceiling - all out, like there'd been a power surge or something. I couldn't even see light seeping in from underneath the doorway.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I headed for the door, at first, but in such complete darkness, it was impossible to tell where the door even </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>was.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> With my hands held out in front of me, I eventually bumped into a wall, but even though I searched both ways along it - left and right - I wasn't able to feel a change in the material that would signal a door. So I tried the next wall to the left, thinking that maybe I'd just bumped into the wrong wall. Again, nothing. The next wall yielded an open door, but only to the bathroom, based on the coldness of the tile under my feet. The wall after that was similarly blank to the other two. I must have gone around in circles a dozen times before I gave up. Every fourth wall was the bathroom door, and I knew that the door to the hallway </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>should</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> have been opposite that, but there was nothing there, no matter how many times I checked.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I gave up on finding a door out, eventually. I tried to make my way back to my bed, which resulted in stubbing my toe, but worked in the end. I was even able to find my phone. Not that it did any good, since it seemed to be dead. Soon enough, I resigned myself to being stuck here until someone let me out.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That never came. I waited for at least three hours - though there wasn't a good way to tell how accurate my timekeeping was - before it hit me that I wasn't going to be let out. Nobody was going to come and open the door for me. I was going to stay in that room forever, until I starved to death or went insane. At least I wouldn't go thirsty, thanks to having the bathroom door accessible, but that didn't mean much to me then. I was alone, and helpless, and there was no way out.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One of my worst fears a kid was being alone in my bedroom in the dark. My older sister and I shared a room until I was eight, and I think it left an impression. She was two years older than me, and would always complain when I left the bedroom door cracked open, but she put up with it. When we finally moved to a bigger house, we got separate rooms. I had nightmares for weeks, even with the door open so the light would come in.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Know how I said I was alone in my room? That wasn't quite right. I couldn't see or hear anyone else in there, but every so often, as I lay in my bed trying not to panic, I would </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>feel</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> something. Not even anything physical. Just the movement of air that followed something else shifting, squirming, </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>lurking.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> It knew exactly where I was, and it was taunting me. Brushing whatever limbs it had close enough to me that I would know it was close, but never enough that I could touch it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was like that for… I don't know. I lost track of time, in the darkness. It all blended together into the sounds of my breath, my own heartbeats that would slow down after a while only to speed up again when something moved nearby. And then, without any sort of warning, I felt something hard and sharp dig into my leg.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I screamed. I screamed until my lungs burned, and then I took a deep breath and screamed all over again. I could feel every jagged edge of the </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>thing's</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> teeth in my leg, so many more of them than there should have been, spiraling up my leg in a line. It was like barbed wire wrapped around from my calf to my knee, but digging deeper and hungrier.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then something soft and slimy, like a giant tongue, touched my wrist on the opposite side. I kept screaming, but my voice was getting ragged and at some point, it turned into sobbing. I heard a sound, like someone knocking on my door. I knew, though, that it was just the horrible thing in the room with me, taunting me. I just kept crying.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Despite the teeth in my leg and the tongue that wouldn't stop </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>tasting me,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> the awful thing never ate me. Maybe it didn't need to. Maybe it was already surrounding me and I just couldn't see it because it swallowed up all the light in the room as well. I don't know, and I don't want to know. However long it went on, though, I wasn't given the favor of death to escape from the creature.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It must have been a week and a half - though it simultaneously felt so much shorter than that, and like it had been </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>years</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> - when the door opened. As soon as it did, letting in blessed, glorious light, the darkness disappeared. The lights all flickered back on, the invisible limbs were gone. The bite marks - if they can even be called that - remained, though, as did the trail of disgusting, slippery saliva on my arm.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Standing in the doorway was the same staff member who had taken me to my room at the start of the cruise. She looked at me, utterly emotionless, and told me that it would be time for me to leave soon. I would have to fill out a survey, first, regarding my experiences, but then I would be permitted to exit the ship.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don't think I've ever filled out a survey so quickly in my life. The questions were phrased as though they were about what the study was </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>meant</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> to research. How well was I able to see in the dark as the time period went on, did I experience any fear, how would I rate the overall experience. I was short, truthful, and to the point. It was miserable and terrifying and I hated every second of it, and I was going to do my damndest to sue them if I could.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I couldn't, by the way. When I went home and checked the paperwork I filled out again, there was a clause stating that any 'unpleasant, unearthly, or unnatural experiences were to be considered accepted risk, and any complaints regarding such would be invalid in a court of law'. But that didn't stop me from insulting the place on every forum I could find, just to scare people off from making the same mistake I did. I'm sure people think I'm crazy, but I don't care. People deserve to know about what that place is up to.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I've done some more research into the Midnight Corporation, too. Apparently, someone drowned on one of their cruises a few years ago. It was ruled an accident, and… I think that might be true, but not in that way. I think they were part of another </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>test,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> like I was, and something went wrong. I think there's more going on here.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think Ms. Nelle and Mrs. Perdon were on the same cruise. Mrs. Perdon mentioned a door on the lower levels of the ship, and that she heard someone screaming behind it, and it fits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It also sounds eerily like the first live statement I took. Noelle Wellmont. I wish I could say that I don't know why I remember her name so well, but… when you see someone's face in your nightmares at least once a week, it tends to stick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But Mrs. Wellmont had nothing to do with Midnight, or anything else. There wasn't even another person </span>
  <em>
    <span>involved</span>
  </em>
  <span> outside of her family. There </span>
  <em>
    <span>can't</span>
  </em>
  <span> be one of those- whatever Missy and Saxon were. The people with </span>
  <em>
    <span>patrons.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm going to look in to Ms. Nelle. Hopefully she's alright. Maybe check in on Mrs. Wellmont, too."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"As far as Yaz could find, Ms. Nelle is alive and now working to become a curator at the Portland Art Museum. Given the current state of everything, and the fact that she lives almost halfway across the globe from the Institute, I chose not to reach out for a follow up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Mrs. Wellmont and her family, on the other hand… The address she wrote down when she last gave her statement is now for sale. I suppose she took my advice and moved. Hopefully it helped."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I still wish I could have done more. This- even knowing that I'm trying to save the world, now, there doesn't feel like there's a </span>
  <em>
    <span>point</span>
  </em>
  <span> if I can't save people like her son. I just sit here in this ivory tower, taking people's suffering and… what? What </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span> does any of it do? Why bother saving the world when everyone in it is going to suffer?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Noelle Wellmont's statement was about something beneath her son's bed, for those who forgot</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Discussion of suicide, sibling death (<i>not</i> from suicide), grief</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"I know this isn't at all relevant to the statement I'm going to read, but I've already talked everyone else's ears off about it. Koschei and I had our first proper date on Wednesday. I still can't walk very far, so we went to a little Thai place near my flat, and it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>brilliant.</span>
  </em>
  <span> I mean, it wasn't really that different from our other dinners, but it </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt</span>
  </em>
  <span> different. Better, in a way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was a nice break from worrying about the end of the world. I feel a little guilty about that, but… I don't even know when the ritual is going to happen. There's nothing wrong with enjoying some time with my- with Koschei."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Slight laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe if I say that enough, I'll believe it. Might even feel okay about it. It's not even that I felt guilty while we were there, just… once I got back to my flat and we said our goodbyes, it kind of hit me that I could've been spending the time doing more research. Not that I think I would've found anything new, but I can't help feeling like I </span>
  <em>
    <span>might have,</span>
  </em>
  <span> if only I'd been less selfish."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've got another unrelated statement for today. Still no luck finding any more about the Church or any disciples, but we've been trying. Graham's been searching newspapers for unsolved arsons in the area that might have a connection, looking for any kind of pattern. A sharp uptick - or decrease - might be an indication that something's changing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Marissa Culp, regarding her twin brother's death. Original statement given January 17th, 2012. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jax and I were born three minutes apart, to the second. I was born first, but he got a bit stuck and gave everyone a scare that something had gone wrong. Then he popped out, easy as anything, after making our mum and dad panic. That was the start of a running theme with him. Jax was brilliant, but he was awful about applying himself. He'd bounce from one idea to another so fast that nobody except me could keep up with him - and even then, it was a struggle. But he didn't do well in school. He just wasn't made for it. Too much energy and rebelliousness, I think. He did take to tennis, though. Loved it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I always had to go to his matches, since it was always easier for me to come along than to make our parents try to work out how to get me home. Usually, I'd bring something to read and ignore the match entirely. Jax never minded much, though he would tease me about it. Normal sibling stuff.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We ended up going to different universities. I was studying computer science, and he was studying philosophy. Still played tennis, though. We would call each other and chat, sometimes. About school, about life, about Jax's girlfriend and my partner at the time.<br/></span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One day, in… June, I believe, of 2005, Jax called me and said he'd bought a book. Naturally, I was obnoxious about it at first. I told him I was proud of him, that I never thought I'd see the day, all that. But he stopped me and said that it was serious. That there was something </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>weird</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> about it. So I shut up, and I listened.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He'd found it at an estate sale - and goodness only knows why he was there in the first place - and bought it for barely anything. It was an old medical textbook from the 1910s, and he was hoping to resell it to someone, I suppose. But he decided to take a look through it, and it was odd.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It wasn't describing actual conditions, or how to treat them. Instead, it read like a collection of case studies. 'Harold Iverne, and his death via heart blockage.' 'Elvira Mills, and her death via sepsis of the arm.' Jax said he got through one of them before he felt so overwhelmingly sick that he had to go lie down for the night. Not because they were gory, or anything like that, but because they were uncannily descriptive. Talking about how it felt for each of the people as they died - physically and mentally. The slow slide into despair for a cancer patient, the burning panic as someone died of a burst appendix. And always ending in the realization that death was inevitable, and there was no escape. Whether they lived or died in that moment didn't matter, because in the end they would be dead either way.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The way he described it sounded horrible enough, but his tone was… unnerving. Flat and dull, nothing like my brother usually sounds.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I told him to sell the book as soon as possible, and not to read any more of it. He made a sort of noncommittal agreeing sound, which I knew meant he was going to ignore me. Like he always did, when I tried to give him advice.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So it wasn't all that surprising when he called me a week later and said he thought he was going to die. I told him he was nuts, but he kept going.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He said he'd read it in the book. 'Jax Culp, and his death via tetanus.' I said he probably just needed to have a chat with his idiot roommates about appropriate pranks.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But I couldn't quite believe it, even then. I did some searching. Obviously, searching 'cursed medical textbook' didn't turn up anything </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>real,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> and Jax hadn't told me the book's actual title, so that was all I had to go on. I did find someone online offering to buy cursed books for absolutely absurd amounts of money, though. I sent Jax their email, just in case he was looking for a buyer.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next day, he called me again and told me he'd seen his death in his dreams. Just the last few moments, a rush of frantic heartbeats and aching-stiff muscles. And then… nothing. Empty, endless darkness. He finally woke up, and he wasn't sweaty or tense. He was just </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>numb.</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I told him that if he was really that nervous, he should go get vaccinated for it. And I asked if he'd gotten my email about the person offering to buy books like his. Jax said that he would look into it - for both things. When I hung up on him, I just felt… odd. Like I'd condemned him to his fate, whatever that was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He told me that he sold the book two days later, and got a good few thousand pounds for it. Apparently, the lady who bought it off him warned him to be careful. She said that there was nothing that he could do about his fate anymore, but that he could delay it as long as possible. 'The reaper doesn't enjoy being cheated, but he'll tolerate being shortchanged.' That's what Jax told me she said.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I asked him if he'd mentioned anything about the contents of the book to her, and he told me that he hadn't. Either she did one </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>hell</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> of a cold read, or she knew something more about that book than we did. Given how little we knew - how little I still know - that isn't saying much.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jax went and got himself vaccinated for tetanus a few days after that, and that seemed to be the end of it. We both graduated from uni, got jobs in our respective fields - I'm a software engineer, and Jax ended up getting a job teaching philosophy. For a few years, we were both fine. Sure, Jax was always careful around rusty metal and all that, but I would have forgotten all about it if we hadn't ended up talking about it at Christmas one year.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was the tail end of 2010, and we'd all gathered at our parents' house for the holidays. They were planning to sell the house and move north in 2011, so it was our last year in the house we grew up in. Jax and I ended up sleeping in our childhood bedroom, and as I was staring up at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come, he started talking. About death, how he felt about it, about how he lived in constant fear of what it would be that killed him. He said that knowing how he would die only made it worse - he couldn't walk around barefoot anymore without worrying that he was going to misstep and wind up dead. He was almost obsessively paranoid about open wounds.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He told me that he'd considered killing himself, just so that he'd have any sort of control over how he died. I managed to talk him out of that. Still not entirely sure how. It was late, I was exhausted, and I'm pretty sure my argument basically amounted to 'if you die before me I'll ruin any reputation you ever had and there'll be nothing you can do to stop me', but it seemed to work.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Three weeks later, my parents called and told me Jax was in the hospital. He'd been walking home from work, tripped, and managed to impale himself in the lung with rusty metal. I'm still not sure how, but I knew from the moment my mum told me what happened that he couldn't have avoided it. Maybe in another life, the tetanus would have come from a different source, or not at all. In this life, though, he was already experiencing severe symptoms of tetanus and the doctors said that there wasn't much chance of him making it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe if I'd listened to him, I could have saved him. Maybe it was inevitable. In a way, I suppose the latter is more likely. Death comes for everyone, eventually. No matter what I did, Jax would have died. But that didn't stop the guilt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I went to visit him in the hospital as soon as I could. He was laying there in bed, spasming and breathing so heavily I could hear him across the room. I sat with him and told him I loved him, that I was sorry for not believing him. That I wouldn't ruin his reputation, because he was a good person and a good </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>brother.</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>All he asked, in between gasps and twitches, was that I live a good life. That was an easy promise to make. And then I watched him spasm again, heard the fast-pace beeping of his heart monitor skyrocket. My only brother, my closest friend, died in front of me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I wanted to be angry. At myself, or at him, or at that book. Mostly, though, I just felt empty. Resigned. There wasn't anything that I could do to change it, and anger wouldn't bring my brother back from the dead.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The funeral was miserable. I was a mess, my parents were sobbing. They ended up selling the house even faster than planned, after that. I guess I don't really blame them. Living in a house full of their dead son's memories must have hurt. But for me, it was worse that they sold it. The house was where we'd grown up, and losing all of that was painful.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm pretty sure that technically, I was depressed after that. Getting out of bed felt impossible, and when I did manage it, the endless pile of tasks that awaited me sent me right back to bed. There was this empty, aching sort of gap in my heart. I understood how Jax felt, that Christmas. The end was unavoidable, and I might as well have some say in how I went.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But I didn't want to give whatever it was that took my brother that satisfaction. Whether it killed Jax purposefully or just drove him to the point where he accepted it as the end, it didn't matter. I wasn't going to let it do the same to me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This is… honestly, this is one of the first times I've left my house properly in the past year. It's the anniversary of his death, and I thought that letting the world know what really happened would be a good way to honor him. As good a way as any.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Another Kovarian, I'm sure. And that woman must have been Professor Song. I really ought to get in touch with her, if the world doesn't end. She might have some useful information.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Normally, I'd have my friends look into Ms. Culp, make sure she's alright, but… right now, they're all looking for anything that might be related to the Scoured Earth or the Church. I don't want to take time away from that, not when it might be so close.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll leave myself a sticky note to come back to this statement when I have the time, I suppose. </span>
  <em>
    <span>If</span>
  </em>
  <span> I have the time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Gore, general grossness<br/>How is it already March??<br/>If you need a translation for a certain part, check the end notes!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"When Yaz was looking for the Church building, I told her not to go poking around, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>apparently</span>
  </em>
  <span> she decided that was just a suggestion. This morning, she handed me a folder of photos she got of the inside of the building over the weekend, including a few of the book. The Righteous Burning, I guess I should say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I… can't say that I'm </span>
  <em>
    <span>upset.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Just worried. If someone had been there and seen her…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But the photos are useful. She didn't have the time to get a full scan of the book, which I don't blame her for. It looks pretty hefty. She did get some of the passages relating to the Scoured Earth, though. I spent most of the morning looking through them, trying to find anything that might say what to look for before the ritual begins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There were two pages that talked about choosing the lamb. The sacrifice. 'And he shall be welle bound to thys earth, for his possessions bindeth him. Richys such as a king's haveth he, for the wealthey hath greater to care for. Search ye welle for his kin, and they shall too ayde in his pain. Kill them slowly, withyn his sight, and sette their formes upon the Fire to burn.'</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They're looking for someone rich, with a large family. At least it'll be obvious if they go missing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I </span>
  <em>
    <span>still</span>
  </em>
  <span> haven't found any more statements about the Church. I even went into the Archives myself on Friday and looked around, but with no real way to tell which statements are about what - short of looking through every single one - I didn't find much. All I got out of that was two very sore legs. My physical therapist wasn't happy about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But I still have to read a statement today. The backlog won't take care of itself, and it won't go away just because the world's ending.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Wesley Arlington, regarding his neighbor's hobbies. Original statement given April 7th, 2009. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My wife Lauren and I moved to Leeds in 2007 for my job. I'm an insurance agent, and she's an author, so the move made sense at the time. The new job there paid better for me, and she found London too noisy to let her really focus on her work. We found a little property in the suburbs (Lauren's always wanted kids) and were moved in fairly quickly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We met the neighbors fairly slowly, over the course of about a month. The McAbbots were to our left, with their two sons, and the Misra family was on the right, with their daughter and adopted son. All of them were perfectly nice. The only odd one was Brennan Pierce, who lived alone across the street from us.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He didn't introduce himself, and Lauren and I only met him because we needed to borrow some salt for our drive when it snowed. Nobody else had any, and we couldn't exactly drive out to get more with the state the roads were in, so we tried to ask him, just on the off chance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He answered the door shirtless, which was the first weird thing. His sweatpants were a disgusting, mottled shade of brown that looked like either dried blood or… well. I'm sure you can guess. There was a </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>smell,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> too. Metallic and sharp, and disturbingly organic. The floors (the ones I could see, at least) were hardwood, but they were covered with clear plastic sheeting.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Lauren and I introduced ourselves, and we asked if he had any road salt we could use. He asked us why, like there wasn't snow up to our ankles. But he did have some. I was expecting to be invited inside while he went and got it, given that it was freezing out, but he just shut the door in our faces and left us outside. He came back a few minutes later with a bag of road salt, handed it to us, and went back inside.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I tried to avoid Brennan after that. Something about him put me off. He just wasn't quite right. But, unfortunately, that ended up being sort of impossible. Brennan worked in the same office building as mine, as it turned out. I managed to miss that for three months, but then one day we happened to be leaving the building at the same time and ran into each other. For whatever incomprehensible reason, I asked him if he'd want to carpool. I think, at the time, I was hoping he'd be more normal the more I got to know him. And, for whatever equally incomprehensible reason… he said yes. We even started and left at the same times, so it was unfortunately convenient.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I got home and told Lauren, she called me an idiot. Which I deserved, but I couldn't exactly back out. The next morning, I knocked on Brennan's door five minutes before I was due to leave and asked him if he was ready. As he stepped out, I caught another glimpse of his house. Plastic sheeting over the floors, weird metallic smell, and all. This time, though, I saw just a hint of something in his living room. Something red and glistening, like meat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But soon enough, Brennan was in my car and we were headed to the office building. He had that smell about him, too, if to a lesser degree. I didn't say anything, at least not then. When we got to the building, he thanked me and told me that he would be waiting in the main lobby. He had an odd, stilted way of speaking. Like he wasn't quite used to having a mouth or a tongue.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The whole day, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd seen in his house. It was just the barest bit of red, lumpy </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>something.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> I managed to convince myself that it was just clay, for some strange art project, but even then it didn't feel true.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I got out of the office, Brennan was waiting in the lobby like he'd said that he would be. Just sitting there, staring at the lift the moment I stepped out of it. It was creepy, but not any worse than anything else I'd seen from him. Just odd, in that small, quiet way he tended to be.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe that's awful of me to say, but I think you'll understand more as I tell the rest.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I didn't see the inside of his house for another few weeks, since he took to waiting in his driveway for me instead. One morning, though, he wasn't, and I wound up having to knock on his door so that he wouldn't be late.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When Brennan answered the door, he looked more dishevelled than normal. He had a pair of gloves on, and they were the same shade of patchy red as his sweatpants had been that first day. The red lump in his living room was larger behind him than it had been, though it was a different shape. Longer, almost humanoid, though the 'limbs' were short and stubby.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He said he needed a minute to get ready, and closed the door on me. Sure enough, two minutes later he was back, sans gloves and somewhat neater. The smell was stronger, though, and bloodier. I mentioned it, that time, and asked him what he was doing. All he said was that he'd been working on making something. That fit with my clay theory, I suppose, but I think I knew by then that it definitely wasn't clay. It was meat, and Brennan was trying to create something out of it. Something human-shaped.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After that, I tried to get another look at the creation. I didn't stoop quite so low as peeking through his windows or anything like that, but I did start arriving earlier to try and see inside. Lauren told me I was being ridiculous, but she was just as curious as I was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was August, I believe, when I finally got another chance. Brennan stayed late at work, so he drove himself instead of carpooling. I'm not above admitting that I was excited to hear that. I wasn't planning to break in at first, but the whole day, I couldn't stop thinking about how easy it would be.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So… when I got home from work, I told Lauren what I was planning. She gave me a look like I was crazy, but promised to call me when she saw Brennan's car. I managed to budge one of the windows and get into the living room.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There was the same plastic sheeting on the floor, but that wasn't what caught my attention. That honor went to the mass of slimy, oozing red flesh in the middle of the room in the rough shape of a person. Not even a rough shape - the exact form of a person. Fingers, hair, eyes and nose and ears and a gaping mouth. All out of stitched-together chunks of meat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It stared at me, and it blinked. I could see the muscles moving, no skin covering them as they slid shut and then opened once more. It was… disgusting. Then, slowly, the creature stood and reached one awful hand out to touch me. I backed away, but not fast enough. It touched me, leaving an oozing handprint on my shirt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don't know if I screamed or not, but that </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>thing</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> did. Its mouth sagged strangely and wetly, toothless, tongue lolling. A horrible rasping noise slid out, something between a scream and a groan. Every cell in my body was yelling at me to run, but I couldn't make myself do anything but stand there as the creature stepped closer with jolting steps.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Its hand on my shirt tightened into a fist, unnaturally strong. The other hand reached out and covered my mouth, and I could taste raw meat and blood. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn't even manage that much.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It groaned again, the sound low and sticky. Like something in a pipe becoming unclogged, when all the water rushes through at once. Slowly, it tilted its head and observed me as I stood there, frozen with fear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My mobile rang. Lauren, I knew. The bright sound seemed to startle the creature, and it flinched away from me. Somehow, that broke the fear over me, and I was able to run for the window. As I was clambering out, that slicky, skinless hand closed around my ankle and the thing groaned. I pulled myself most of the way out of the window, letting gravity do the work in yanking me free of the creature's grip.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hitting the ground nearly face first hurt, but it was better than staying. I heard Brennan's car pulling into his drive, so I rejected Lauren's call, slammed the window shut and cowered behind the house until I heard him shut his front door. Then I sprinted for my own house, frantic.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I told Lauren everything, after I took a shower and changed my clothing. I ended up having to toss out my shirt, since the stain wouldn't come out. She said we should call the police, and it sounded like a good idea.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They showed up, went into Brennan's house, and then… there was screaming. That same low, wet groan that still haunts my nightmares, and very human </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>screaming.</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> And gunshots.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don't know exactly what happened, but I can guess. Brennan's place was closed off for a good month, with all kinds of government vehicles and officials around it. Whatever it was that Brennan… made, I suppose, it wasn't good.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That was an uncomfortably visceral one. Just </span>
  <em>
    <span>physically,</span>
  </em>
  <span> it felt too real. They all feel real, I suppose, but I could taste the… meat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This one'll go on the list to research after the end of the world, I suppose. It's definitely one that needs looking into. Meat monsters aren't exactly the sort of thing I want to be unaware of, especially not if someone can just create them."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Door opening.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Theta, I just found a statement I think you'll want to read. It's about the Church."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh! Ryan, that's </span>
  <em>
    <span>brilliant.</span>
  </em>
  <span> I'll get started on that-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"On Friday, because you need a break between statements?"</span>
</p><p>P<em><span>ause.</span></em></p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll hide it somewhere if I have to. You're still recovering, and these exhaust you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine. I'll read it on Friday. You know I'm technically your boss, right?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And I'm </span>
  <em>
    <span>technically</span>
  </em>
  <span> your friend, Theta."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"...Sorry. End of the world's been a little stressful."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sarcastic laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tell me about it. But waiting until Friday to read a statement won't make it come any faster."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You… have a point."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"One second, let me switch this off. I'll go out and help sort for the rest of today. I haven't done that in a while."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You can steal Graham's chair. You know he-"<br/>
</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translation of the passage from the book in modern English, for people who don't want to parse all my deliberate weird spellings:<br/>And he will be well bound to this earth, for his possessions will bind him. He will have riches like a king's, for the wealthy have more to care for. Search well for his kin, and they will aid in his pain as well. Kill them slowly, within his sight, and set their forms upon the Fire to burn</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Stalking, fire and fire-related trauma<br/>I'll be taking a break tomorrow so that the finale chapters can go up together on Thursday. It's going to be A Lot</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Ashad Kyberman went missing yesterday evening. He… fits the bill, for the Church's sacrifice. Head of the tech company the family owns, so he's definitely rich, and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> the Kyberman family is extensive. Ryan set up a monitor for police radio, and they haven't found any evidence of where he might be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yaz insisted on going to scout out the Church building to make sure. Graham went along, too, so that she won't do anything too risky. I can't exactly run, if something were to happen, so Ryan and I are staying here. For now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But I need to do </span>
  <em>
    <span>something,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and the information in that Church statement Ryan found might be useful. Once Yaz and Graham get back, we can put together a plan and stop them. Anything we can use will help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement of Fletcher Rosenberg, regarding their former flatmate. Original statement given September 8th, 2012. Audio recording by Theta Lungbarrow, Head Archivist of the Gallifrey Institute, London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Statement begins."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My house burned down when I was six. Our stove had some sort of leak in the gas line, it was winter, and there was enough static electricity to ignite it one night. We were all asleep, and my room was farthest from the door, closest to the kitchen.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I didn't realize what was happening until the heat woke me up. I can't remember if there were smoke alarms in our house, or if they even worked. Either way, they didn't make a difference. By the time I woke up, the fire had reached my bedroom, and I had no way out. The flames were blocking the door, the only window in my bedroom was sealed shut so that I wouldn't try to open it and fall.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The rush of heat swallowed up my oxygen, and I couldn't even scream for help. I choked on the smoke, the fire creeping closer to my bed as I lay there trembling and terrified. My blankets and sheets caught, and I was too stunned, too weak to shove them off of me in time to save myself. When the flames licked at my skin, I did try to scream. My parents didn't hear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The fire brigade arrived eventually. Not before most of the house was destroyed and I suffered third degree burns over most of my body, but… eventually. I recovered, in the end, at least physically. Six is too young to be so viscerally aware of how close death is in every open flame.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My parents bought another house, without a gas stove. They installed proper smoke alarms, and made sure that my bedroom was on the ground floor and near the door. It helped, somewhat. I slept with the door open for months before I'd even consider anything less, and open flames still make me nervous. Something as small as a candle can make me panic.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But I grew up, like everyone does, and eventually I moved out into my own flat in 2010. I had a flatmate - Miranda Anderson. She was nice enough, at least at first. I explained my thing about fire, and she nodded and said she understood. There was an odd look in her eye then, though. I should have noticed it. I didn't.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For the first few months, sharing a flat with Miranda was everything I'd expected. We split up the household chores, and she occasionally stole my food or put the toilet roll back the wrong way 'round, but we didn't have any major fights or issues. She tended to like the temperature a little warmer than I preferred, but that was our only longstanding debate - usually resolved by whoever got up first on a given day.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In that December, Miranda first mentioned the Church. It was just offhand, at first. I</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span> asked Miranda if she celebrated anything this time of year, and she made a sort of wiggly hand gesture and said that her church wasn't big on holidays. She didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask her to. It wasn't really my business.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It came up again in March, when she disappeared for three days and didn't give me any warning. I came home from work to find her gone, and no amount of calling her mobile got a reply. I was about five missed calls away from calling the police and telling them I thought she'd been kidnapped or something when she showed up on Friday like nothing had happened.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Miranda smelled like smoke and the sharp heat of too-hot metal. Her clothing was the same as it had been when she left, but it was covered in soot and ash. It immediately had me on edge, and I asked her where she'd been. She said she'd been at her church for a ceremony, and not to worry about it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But I </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>was</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> worried, and I said that she should at least give me a warning next time. Miranda brushed it off and said that fine, she would. It wasn't sincere, but I was just glad she was okay, so I dropped it for the time being.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then she did it again the next month, and came back looking… wrong. Miranda had good skin, sure - she took up half the restroom sink with her lotions and stuff - but in the brief glimpse I caught of her before she disappeared off to her room, her face seemed shinier than usual. When she finally emerged again, I was too busy gearing up for a proper row with her about swanning off without a warning </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>again</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> to care, though.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That didn't end up happening, though, because when she stepped out of her room she was toying with a lighter. Just one of those little plastic ones you can get from the store, with a solid red casing. She kept flicking it, lighting the flame and then letting it go out.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I've had plenty of panic attacks in my life, but the one that followed that was one of the worst I'd had in years. I could feel my chest tightening, breath coming shorter and harsher, I could feel the flames eating through my clothing to bite at my skin, I could see them devouring the walls around me. Miranda didn't seem to care, and she kept lighting it even as I stood there in the hallway, frozen and hyperventilating.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I passed out, I think. I remember my vision going dark as Miranda leaned against her doorframe and watched me panic, and then the next thing I knew, it was forty-five minutes later and she was in the kitchen making herself coffee. She didn't say anything, but she sort of smirked at me as I stumbled out of the house to take a walk and calm down.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I called my best friend, Isaac, and he offered to let me stay with him until I could properly move out and find a new place. Part of me hated giving up so easily, but I also knew that staying was a terrible idea. Whatever Miranda was mixed up in, whatever her church was, and whatever she'd been doing at those rituals… I wanted no part in it. I didn't want to let her torment me for her own amusement, either.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two days later, I'd packed up my things - I've always been good about keeping my stuff somewhere I can get it and go quickly. Isaac's flat wasn't exactly huge, but he had a sofa with a pull-out bed and a flatmate that didn't mind me staying for a few months so long as I helped out. It worked.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>By August, I had my own flat again. This time, I was sharing with a mutual friend of mine and Isaac's who'd just gotten out of an abusive relationship, named William. He understood my hesitance to share a flat with a stranger, and since he was also in need of a place to stay, it made sense. And, honestly, given our respective traumas, sharing the flat went surprisingly well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not two weeks after I'd been there, though, I saw Miranda while I was headed home. She was on the street outside of the building, looking at it. My flat was on the bottom floor for obvious reasons, which meant that I could be quite confident she was looking in the window. When I got closer, she walked off, but I warned William about her anyway. I told him to call the cops if he saw her out there again, and to be extra careful.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That advice turned out to pay off when, a few days later, Miranda broke in. I was at work, but since he was still looking for a proper job, he'd been staying home most days. He'd been ready to dial 999 ever since he saw her walk past, and when he heard the door open his finger was already on the call button.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It still wasn't quick enough, though. Miranda managed to get in and knock him out, and by the time emergency services got there… Well. I didn't even keep petrol in the flat, so Miranda must have brought it herself, but the whole place was set to burn. Anything flammable was in the living room along with William, and everything else was soaked through so that it would ignite. She was arrested, and I chose to press charges. Between the damages and the insurance, it was enough to pay to replace everything, but neither me or William could bear to live in the flat anymore after that. I could still smell the petrol, and I could feel the heat of the flames she came so close to setting. William was honestly doing even worse than I was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After that, we ended up moving out of London, to Ashford. It was more expensive, but it was far enough away from both Miranda and William's ex that we both felt safer. Not that that mattered.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In January, William disappeared on his way home from his job at the library and was found two days later, burnt to death. Miranda was still in jail, but I know it was some other member of that church- that <strong>cult</strong> of hers, continuing her work of trying to hurt me through the people I care about.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I'm about to move to the States in a few weeks. Hopefully that will get me away from Miranda and the destruction that seems to follow me. But I thought I'd tell my story, just in case it warns someone in the future. Just in case they're in the same situation as me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Statement ends."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was hoping for- I don't know. A secret weapon to defeating those wax people, or an account of how their last ritual had been stopped. Something that would make all of this easy. I guess I was too optimistic. All I've got to work with is what I know now, and that isn't much. But I've at least got to try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think I'll call Koschei and warn him to be careful. If the world is going to end, I'd rather he have some sort of heads up. It's better than nothing. Then I'll just wait here with Ryan for Yaz and Graham to make contact. Maybe those fire extinguishers will come in handy again."</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"It's definitely the Church. Ryan and I are leaving now, after he gets a few more fire extinguishers. I called Koschei, but got sent to voicemail. I just hope he's alright.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"End recording."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Typical cult-y stuff, torture, minor character death<br/>Chapter 20 will be up at some point today, but the confrontation scene is giving me issues and I didn't want to make people wait for chapter 19 any longer. Keep an Eye - sorry, <i>eye</i> - out for the finale chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Faint rumble of a car engine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Next left up here, Ryan."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "This one?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Yeah, and then it should be straight from here. I imagine we'll know the building when we see it."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Do you think they're alright?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I don't know. I hope so. I really, really hope so, but…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "But Yaz hasn't said anything since she texted saying it was the Church, and that's a little suspicious?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Exactly. I don't know what she's doing that means she couldn't have called, but I don't think it's anything good."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Is that the building up there?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Pretty sure. The car park looks packed. But I don't see Yaz or Graham - which is probably a good thing. They must have parked further away and walked. We could-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "No, Theta. Not worth it."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Then we'll have to be quiet. I've no clue what the acoustics are like in the chapel, and I don't want them hearing a car pull up but nobody to come in."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know.</span>
  </em>
  <span> I'm going to be careful."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I'll text Yaz, ask where she is. We can meet up and make a plan. You've got the fire extinguishers in the back, right?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "You saw me put them in, Thete."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Right. Sorry. Had to make sure."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Crunch of gravel.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Car engine goes quiet.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A single short buzz.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Yaz says they're behind the church."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Should we take the fire extinguishers?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Probably best to leave them here for now. Or just bring one."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Right. Okay. You know, it's a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot</span>
  </em>
  <span> scarier to actually do this than I expected."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Yeah, it is. But you can do it, Ryan, I know you can. You're brave."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "And I don't have much of a choice."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Quiet laughter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "That too. Come on."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Soft footsteps, slightly uneven.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Muffled words.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Are they chanting?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I… don't think so. Just talking. They're still waiting for their chosen one to show up."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Ugh. Can't imagine making small talk before trying to start the end of the world."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "It's better than the alternative, where they've already started it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Good point."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Yaz! Graham! Good to see you're alive and weren't taken hostage."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Thanks, I think."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Well, when all I got from Yaz was a text, I got a bit worried that-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Lower your voice. There's a vent that comes out back here, and you can hear what they're saying if you're quiet."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Muffled voices.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Faint static; the voices become clear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"The chosen is soon to arrive. The lamb shall be prepared by those devoted, and then the time will be nigh. May we be reborn in the pure world that shall follow."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"May we be reborn."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Step forward, devoted, and bring with you each the kin of the lamb that you have captured."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Garbled words, as if through a gag.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Silence, kindling. Face your fate with dignity, that your kin may do the same. Are you watching, Ashad Kyberman? See how your family will burn."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>G "They're all mad."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Was the apocalyptic cult bit not a hint? Now shush, I think he's saying something."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Their pain tempers from them all impurities, redeeming them in their death. When the world is cleansed, they shall be born anew, as shall we."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"May we be reborn."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"You see your blood burn before you, and yet shed no tears. Are you unfeeling, or do you secretly rejoice in their deaths? Your stoicism hides not your fear; there is no point in maintaining it. The heat shall burn away all fog you may cloak yourself in."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Continued, though quieter, screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"See how the first of them has succumbed to the Flame already. Devoted, take the body to the altar. You know the way to prepare it."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Should we move? Can they see us from the pyre?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Don't think so. Besides, if we go too far over, we'll be visible from the road. Let's just stay here."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Another of your kin has become fuel for the Flame. You should be grateful even in your fear, Kyberman. It is an honor to be the source of the Flame's heat, and your family was chosen quite carefully for that honor. Your fog and isolation have toyed with our kin before, and revenge is considered a virtue to the Flame. It is almost a pity that the chosen has yet to arrive. He does so enjoy watching those who have wronged him suffer."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A quiet, sharp inhale.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"But no matter. He shall arrive soon enough, and it is only your death that he need perform, after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ah, and there is the fear. You despise the thought of one whom your god has preyed upon killing you, do you not? You fear that he shall treat you much as you did him; toying with you before the final blow is dealt. That is a well-founded terror, though he will not make the mistake which you did by allowed a chance for escape. Without the warmth of the Flame's embrace, perhaps your god would have found itself sustenance - or a new disciple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What a pity that would have been. Destruction suits him far better than isolation ever would."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Screaming becomes quieter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"And now, the second of your blood has passed. Your fear is growing stronger. Have you realized that no help will arrive? The rest of your kin have no hint as to your whereabouts, and I find it highly doubtful that they would care if they did. Your family is oft linked solely by blood, is it not? No true connection binds you. And yet, you feel pain at their loss. Perhaps there is a reason your kin care less for you than they do even each other."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "There's a car coming up."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Three guesses to who that is, and the first two don't count. We're running out of time."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "We need a plan."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Is it too late to call the police and let them handle this?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Do you really think they would believe us, or that they could get here before the ritual ends? We're on our own, Graham. Now, taking down the chosen one is the best way of stopping this."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "What, you mean jumping him outside of his car or something?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R "If we did that, there might still be time for him to recover. Or the rest of them might realize and get us."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Exactly. We need to wait until he's about to complete the ritual, and disrupt him then."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "That'll cut it close."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Do you have a better idea?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence, with very faint screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Right. After he enters the church, Yaz and Ryan, you two go get the rest of the fire extinguishers. Go around the right so if anyone heads to the fire pit they don't see you. Graham and I'll stay here to keep an ear out."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Distant crunch of gravel beneath tires.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"He is here. Clear the aisles, that he might join the devoted and see as the rest of the lamb's kin suffer."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Door creaking open.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ah, good, I didn't miss the pre-show. Don't stop on my account, you know I like to watch them squirm."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "That's…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "It can't be. He wouldn't- he isn't- he-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"How wonderful to see you grace these Flame-blessed grounds again, Koschei."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: Fire, eye and hand trauma via fire, torture<br/>And here it is, several hours after the first part went up because I rewrote the confrontation about five times before I was finally happy with it. The next part of the series should be up in a week or two, though it might be a little longer - I've got a few different projects that I'm juggling right now, and I want to give them all the time and attention they need to flourish. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning this AU (I've got <i>far</i> too many plans for that), but it'll be a little while before part three is ready.<br/>With all that out of the way, enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"He can't be. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>can't</span>
  </em>
  <span> be. There's got to be another reason he's here. He's- he wouldn't-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shuddering gasp.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, are you uncomfortable? That just won't do. Here, why don't I take these off? There we go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Now, if you so much as </span>
  <em>
    <span>twitch</span>
  </em>
  <span> and I don't like it, I'll pick somewhere and start burning, are we clear, Ashad? I'll probably start with your hands, since the skin there is so thin I'll hit bone </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> quickly. But if I need to, I'll get creative. I won't touch your face unless I have to, though, because that tends to impair vision and it would be a true pity for you not to see what's happening to your family, such as it is. Nod once - and </span>
  <em>
    <span>only</span>
  </em>
  <span> once - if you understand."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I said </span>
  <em>
    <span>once."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Loud, ragged screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I did warn you about the fingers. Want to try that again?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Wonderful! In that case, Miranda, you can go back to playing with that one. She looks like she'll break soon."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I'm going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill him."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Theta, sit down!"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Scuffling noises.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>G "I get that you're upset, but they'll probably notice if you run in trying to punch him!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I don't </span>
  <em>
    <span>care,</span>
  </em>
  <span> I'm going to kill him anyway!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Stick. To. The. Plan."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I made the plan before I knew my- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Koschei</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the chosen one! The plan is no longer valid, because I'm going to go in there and </span>
  <em>
    <span>murder him."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Can you wait to murder him until he's out here, and not inside and surrounded by other crazy cultists with fire powers?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Heavy sigh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "You're… you're right. I need to be smart about this. We'll stick to the plan. You two, go get the extinguishers. Not sure how well they'll work, but it's better than nothing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Are you sure?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I'm fine. Or I will be."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Such a pity that last one was a crier. I'd thought he would have held up better under the pressure. No matter, though. It's time for the </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span> fun to start.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Though… one last passage from the Righteous Burning before we put it in to practice, perhaps?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course. It is only right."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The sound of someone clearing their throat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"When the Flame hath been lit, and the lamb lieth upon the holy altar, the World shall be fitte to be remade. Fire lyk that from on high shall reign down upon the Earth, and the grounde shall shayk, and the peaks shall relyse their hidden Flame, and the waters shall rys as when they swept the ground in Noah's time, and all shall die and become pure. Thys is the way of the end of the worlde."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"As beautiful as always. Now, let's stop delaying and take our little lamb to the altar."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Yaz and Ryan aren't done yet!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Well, I don't think they care about that much. Those two're smart enough to notice and hide, boss, I promise."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "I hate this. I hate </span>
  <em>
    <span>all</span>
  </em>
  <span> of this. I never should've taken John's job. I've put all of you in danger."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "If it wasn't you and the rest of us, it would've been some other unlucky buggers. Least this way we can try to help. That's something, right?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "...Right.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We should move closer to the altar, try to see what we can."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "And you won't do anything rash, like running in there too early?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Honestly, Graham. I promise, I'm capable of sticking to the plan."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Like you when you wanted to run in there unarmed and go after your-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "He's not my </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and I'm not unarmed. I've got my knife."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can see you thinking about trying something. Let me just say, I would </span>
  <em>
    <span>greatly</span>
  </em>
  <span> enjoy an excuse to do some real harm before you get on the altar. Those burns on your fingers are only second degree, by the way. I haven't done fourth degree in quite a while, but I'm sure I still have the touch. So, to make this simple and - well, still painful, I will admit - I think it's best that you get up there without trying anything, don't you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right, good. Miranda, be a dear and bring me the restraints. The last thing we need is some untimely thrashing about ruining everything. It all needs to be perfect."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause, broken by gentle humming of an indistinct tune.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"There. All tied up. Time for my part to really begin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You won't be needing your eyes at this point, so I'll start with those and work my way down. I'd say to brace yourself, but… it won't make any difference."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>G "I take back what I said, something rash sounds like a good idea right about now."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>T "Soon. We need to be sure that it's the right time."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"You know, I never get tired of watching them </span>
  <em>
    <span>pop</span>
  </em>
  <span> like that. It's so strangely satisfying. I've done my best to localize the damage, so under normal circumstances, you would probably recover. Maybe even live a somewhat normal life. I'm sure you know how </span>
  <em>
    <span>remarkable</span>
  </em>
  <span> technology can be these days. However, that screaming is getting rather annoying, so I think your throat will be next."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Screaming continues, then grows strangled, then stops.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think that's a lot better, doesn't everyone agree?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>General noises of agreement.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"But I've drawn this out long enough. Torture is all well and good, but we are here for a reason. I'd ask if you have any final words, Ashad, but I'm afraid I don't care."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Static.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've got to do it now."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Be careful."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't worry about me. Go and get Yaz and Ryan, try to put out the fire. I'll handle Koschei."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Determined, uneven footsteps.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"With your death, the Flame will light and-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You lying </span>
  <em>
    <span>bastard."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The thud of a solid punch landing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Overlapping shouts.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No one move!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hello, love. I did wonder if you would figure it out."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Scuffling sounds, including a sudden exhale as if someone were just shoved to the ground.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Surprised laughter, very quickly cut off.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Figure it out?</span>
  </em>
  <span> That you were lying to me and </span>
  <em>
    <span>using me?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"You lied to me first! You promised that you wouldn't leave, and then you abandoned me to fend for myself. And unlike you, the Flame keeps its promises, so guess which one I chose? Not that it matters now. I think we're roughly even at this point, don't you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Is this </span>
  <em>
    <span>seriously</span>
  </em>
  <span> about that? We were </span>
  <em>
    <span>ten,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Koschei! I didn't have any more say in leaving than you did! At least you had a chance to have a normal childhood, instead of being used as a lab rat, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> want to end the world?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But doesn't the world deserve it, love? You've seen firsthand the kind of suffering that it brings. No one deserves to go through that, particularly- What's wrong with wanting to burn it all down, putting a stop to all the injustice and the hurt?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, don't even try that with me. You're a sadistic </span>
  <em>
    <span>monster</span>
  </em>
  <span> using this to hurt more people and we both know it. And I-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sudden yelp, followed by a heavy thud and a pained sound, then more shuffling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"You really shouldn't try to pin someone when you can barely walk, love. Now, stay there. This'll be over soon enough. Think of it this way - you've got front row seats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's almost poetic, isn't it? The two most important things in my life, and one is going to destroy the other. I'm sure your pain will be </span>
  <em>
    <span>incandescent."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't </span>
  <em>
    <span>touch me-"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two overlapping shouts of pain.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A rush of wind, as if brought on by a sudden bout of heat, and screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Y "Theta? Are you- oh </span>
  <em>
    <span>no."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "Did you find her? Is she…?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "They're alive, but look at the state of their </span>
  <em>
    <span>arms."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>R "I'll call 999. Hopefully they'll get here before…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "How did this even happen? I only left a minute before everything exploded, and she was just going to confront </span>
  <em>
    <span>him."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Maybe there was some sort of backlash from interrupting the ritual, or maybe Theta managed to actually stop it."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pause.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>G "We should put those fire extinguishers to work. I don't think that church properly burning down will do much good."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y "Yeah. I'll be right there. Just going to check if anyone else survived."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>G "Got it. If you find her friend-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y </span>
  <em>
    <span>"If</span>
  </em>
  <span> I find him, he's going to wish I hadn't."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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